Updates

Update from AIJAC

June 24, 2011
Number 06/11 #04

Today’s Update features two pieces looking inside the increasingly important Syrian popular rebellion, now almost three months old. It also contains an interesting new look at recent developments in Egyptian politics in the run-up to the September elections.

The lead item is a fascinating account from inside Syria from unidentified journalists affiliated with the top German magazine, Der Spiegel. They find a country which “has disintegrated into a surreal patchwork of places where it is tense but quiet, and combat zones in which the regime’s most loyal units are killing people indiscriminately.” They tell many terrible stories of murder by forces of a regime whose policy is simply to “kill and hope” they can hold on to power, and speak to many ordinary Syrians, who seem overwhelmingly determined that it will not. For what is one of the best available accounts of what is currently happening in Syria, CLICK HERE.

Next up is former Syrian political prisoner Ahed Alhendi, who writes both of his own experiences of regime repression, and what he is hearing from daily contacts with the leaders of the current protest movement. He says that unlike past opposition movements in Syria, “the opposition is far more diverse and cohesive; all the tribes — businessmen, youth leaders, Muslim Brotherhood leaders, and Kurds — were represented at Antalya” where a conference of the opposition took place a few weeks ago. He pleads for Western support for democracy forces to balance the support the regime is getting from Russia, China and Iran. For his full plea, CLICK HERE.

Finally, Indian journalist Jagdish N. Singh looks at the political situation in Egypt and finds some disturbing parallels with Iran following the 1979 revolution there. He says the Muslim Brotherhood is gaining momentum, others are jumping on the bandwagon hoping to get their interests catered for and liberal forces are now falling silent. He also has some interesting ideas about what Western states hoping to encourage genuine  democracy in Egypt can do – and the limits of what they can do. For all that he has to say, CLICK HERE. Meanwhile, in what seemed potentially good news for democrats in Egypt, Egyptian PM Essam Sharaf recently hinted that the election scheduled for September might be postponed, giving new parties more time to organise. However, he is now denying he wants this.

Readers may also be interested in:

• Two of the best sources for day-to day information on what is happening in Syria –  Syrian Revolution News Round-Ups, a Facebook-based daily resource edited by British-based Syrian exile activist Ausama Monajed and Syrian Revolution Digest, a news blog put together by US-based Syrian exile Ammar Abdulhamid.
• Some varied analysis of Bashar al-Assad’s latest speech on Monday, in which he vaguely promised reform, offered an amnesty, and blamed most of the unrest on “a “conspiracy” of “outlaws,” “vandals” and “takfiri extremists” – see here, here, here and here.
• Many analysts are arguing that the Assad regime is now in serious trouble – see for example Israeli analyst Jacque Neriah and Washington Institute scholar Andrew Tabler, as well as Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak. However, others disagree – for example noted Israeli military correspondent Ron Ben Yishai.
• An interesting story about anti-regime protests in Palestinian refugee camps in Syria following the use of Palestinians to provoke a clash along the Syria-Israel border earlier this month.
• British columnist Nick Cohen on why Syria is an Apartheid regime.
• Another possible source of  international pressure on the Assad regime, after the German judge who investigated the 2005 killing of Lebanese PM Rafiq Hariri for the UN says publicly that the murder was ordered by Bashar al-Assad. 
• US President Barack Obama gave a major speech to announce his planned Afghanistan troop drawdown on Wednesday – many reactions are summarised here by AIJAC’s Daniel Meyerowitz-Katz.  Some additional reactions are here, here, and here.
• More criticism of Obama appears likely in the wake of confirmation that his plan is contrary to the advice of his generals and military advisors in drawing down force numbers relatively quickly.
• Tomorrow will mark 5 years that kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit has been held illegally by Hamas in Gaza, as Isabel Kershner reports in the New York Times. Alistair Burt, the UK Minister for the Middle East, has issued a statement imploring Hamas to release Shalit.
• For those who did not see it in the Australian, AIJAC’s Arsen Ostrovsky had a good piece there today on the planned Gaza flotilla. For that matter, there was a good piece on the same subject by Rowan Dean in Wednesday’s Sydney Morning Herald.

 

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‘They Can Only Kill and Hope’

Journey Through a Divided Syria

By SPIEGEL Staff

Der Spiegel, 06/22/2011 05:05 PM

Violence committed by thugs loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad has prompted thousands of Syrians to flee to Lebanon and Turkey. Sources in the country describe growing opposition to a system based on nepotism and secret police. Meanwhile, pockets of rebellion are continuing unchecked.

In the Syrian city of Ariha, the cherry trees are covered with deep red fruit. It is harvest time and the cherries are sweet, but no one comes to pick them.

Two weeks ago, after the regime’s elite troops had transformed peaceful demonstrations in the nearby provincial capital Idlib into bloodbaths, two young men tried to save the cherry harvest. They loaded their small truck full of cherries and took off for the port city of Latakia in western Syria.

They didn’t make it very far. A military patrol stopped the two men in front of a sugar refinery and shot them dead.

In Turmoil

Syria is in turmoil, but there is no widespread revolution like there is in Libya. Instead, the country has disintegrated into a surreal patchwork of places where it is tense but quiet, and combat zones in which the regime’s most loyal units are killing people indiscriminately. There are cities that fear has transformed into ghost towns, and more than 10,000 Syrians have already fled to Turkey and Lebanon.

What began in mid-March in the country’s far south as a revolt of local tribes against the government’s arrest and torture of young people has gradually spread to almost every city in the country. For two months, a kind of peculiar equilibrium reigned between the two sides. Every Friday, after noon prayers, hundreds or even thousands of peaceful protesters marched through Daraa, Homs, Hama, Latakia, Idlib and the Damascus suburbs. Every Friday, rooftop snipers and soldiers posted along the roads shot and killed dozens of people. The dead were carried to their graves on Saturdays. Sometimes even the funeral processions came under fire. Things were quiet from Sunday to Thursday — until the next Friday.

But since early June, when residents of Jisr al-Shughour on the Turkish border began shooting at advancing army units, parts of the north have descended into civil war. Up to 30,000 soldiers with the Republican Guard and the army’s Fourth Tank Division, under the command of the president’s younger brother, Maher Assad, have attacked one village after the next. At the same time, however, the security forces have withdrawn from other cities. People seem nervous in downtown Damascus and Aleppo, the country’s two biggest cities. Around 10,000, perhaps even 15,000 Assad opponents have been arrested, and the opposition claims that more than 1,300 have been killed.

But as confusingly inconsistent as the political situation is, there is great similarity among the images one sees while driving through the oppressed country. In hilly areas across the country, from the Al-Ansariyyah Mountains in the north to the slopes of the Anti-Lebanon Mountains near Damascus, the cherry trees are covered with blood-red, overripe fruit. The owners of the orchards are not harvesting the fruit — because they are afraid of being arrested at one of the ubiquitous military checkpoints, because the roads are closed, preventing them from transporting the harvest to the cities, and because no one would venture out into the streets to buy them if they did.

In Madaya, a mountain resort town an hour’s drive west of Damascus, a supermarket owner stands in his fruit section and says unapologetically, seemingly oblivious to his open shop door: “There is no road back to reconciliation with this regime. They have shed too much blood.” Even here, in this idyllic town, two people were killed during a Friday protest.

Cemetery-Like Calm

Syria, a precarious multiethnic country with a Sunni majority and Christian, Druze and Alawite minorities, had remained calm even as other Arab dictatorships were already beginning to totter. This was surprising, given that the Assad clan, which has been in power for the last 40 years, has filled most top posts in the military, intelligence services and government with members of the Alawite minority, a Shiite group within Islam that makes up only 10 percent of the population. It is also surprising given that the relatives of President Bashar Assad have secured ownership of the most profitable monopolies for themselves and treat the country like their private property.

It is an explosive mixture reminiscent of the situation in Tunisia and Egypt, where it was popular hatred of the greedy ruling clans that largely contributed to their overthrow.

But there is one achievement of the Assad dictatorship that has discouraged many from demanding change: peace and a cemetery-like calm.

This relative calm was paired with a deliberately stoked fear of the Sunni majority and of an Islamist takeover. Syria borders Iraq, and since 2003 the Syrians have experienced wave after wave of refugees, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis fleeing their country, first from the Americans, then from Sunni jihadists, then from Shiite death squads and, finally, from the random killing. This left a deep impression on the Syrians.

While hundreds of thousands marched through the streets of Tunis and Cairo, the young Facebook activists in Damascus only managed to bring a few hundred protesters into the streets. They were promptly beaten by the police and arrested.

As recently as the end of January, Assad declared that his country was “immune to such unrest.” A young Syrian blogger wrote: “It hurts badly that so far the ship of the revolution has been sailing on without us.”

Deadly Response

Then came Daraa, where 15 youths were arrested for painting anti-government graffiti. Their fathers and the local sheikh went to the provincial intelligence chief, Atif Najib, a cousin of the president, to plead their cases, arguing that those arrested were just children.

Forget them, Najib allegedly said, and send me your wives so that I can make more children for you. The man’s exact words have long been lost in the wild embellishments of the story. But it was enough to encourage the tribes of Daraa to take to the streets, burn down the court building and the party headquarters, occupy a square in the center of the town and assert their power in their own way. And they certainly didn’t use Facebook to do so.

The regime’s response was deadly. For weeks, Daraa was attacked, surrounded and put under siege. More than 400 people died in the gunfire or in torture cells. Suddenly it seemed that the rebellion had reached Syria. Early in the conflict, it was rumored that President Assad was going to give a speech, a great speech of national reconciliation, his best speech yet.

In a speech before the parliament on March 30, he complained of foreign conspiracies and malicious campaigns by satellite broadcasters, and saying that anyone who wanted a “fight” could have it. In between threats, he told jokes and laughed at his own wisecracks.

Critics today say that Assad’s laughter on that day was a crescendo that marked the beginning of his demise. “At that time, the security forces had already shot and killed more than 100 people. If he had only uttered one sentence expressing regret over their deaths, and if he had remained serious, he could have saved the situation,” says one of the very few political analysts in Damascus who speak with both sides: with the committees of protesters and with those supporters of the president who know how futile the killing is.

 

‘Other than Violence, They Have No Solution’

It was not the resistance to the system itself that drove people to the barricades, but the regime’s immoderate, brutal reaction, says the Damascus political insider, who did not want to be identified by name. The “closeness to the people” that Assad liked to invoke apparently represented nothing but the distance between the soldiers’ weapons and the protesters, the informant says bitterly. “There are no longer any policies. Other than violence, they have no solution. They can only kill and hope.”

Back in 1970, Hafez Assad, the current president’s father, who was defense minister at the time, had the rest of the cabinet arrested and staged a coup in the name of what he called a “corrective movement.” Hafez Assad became Syrian president in 1971, a position he would hold until 2000. Ever since the 1970 coup, violence has consistently been the ultimate tool of power in the country. But in the days of Assad senior, there was no Internet, and neither YouTube nor camera phones existed, so that the killing remained invisible.

When the Muslim Brotherhood engaged in armed resistance in the city of Hama in early 1982, killing dozens of party officials, intelligence agents and their families, Hafez Assad had the city surrounded and bombarded as if it were enemy territory. Between 10,000 and 30,000 people died in the massacre, which went largely unnoticed by the rest of the world. Assad pursued his policies like a game of chess — coldly, intelligently and methodically. He positioned Syria as a “front-line state” against Israel, and in 1991, he effortlessly switched sides and supported the Americans in their campaign against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. He had planned everything carefully, but his succession didn’t quite go according to his plans.

The first-born son Basil was his intended successor. But he died in a car accident in 1994 when he tried to drive his Mercedes around the tight curves in front of the Damascus airport at 200 kilometers per hour.

Giggling in Uniform

As a result, the second-eldest son, Bashar Assad, was chosen instead. After having been brought home to be groomed as the heir to the throne, he assumed the presidency in the summer of 2000, after the death of his father. He was in the unusual position of being a dictator who had not had to shoot his way to power, but simply took over his father’s position.

Even after a decade in office, Bashar Assad still looks like someone who became president by mistake. He always seems a little uncertain or confused, sometimes overcompensating with exaggerated gestures. On the largest poster displayed on a wall near the university, he looks as if he were giggling in his medal-laden uniform, while his father, on the next poster, merely shows his predator’s smile.

Assad junior promised to put an end to the personality cult surrounding his father and remove the ubiquitous presidential portraits. He was the most prominent member of the Syrian Computer Society. But the “Damascus spring” of small freedoms and great hopes ended after only a year. The system simply continued, as if it had been set on autopilot by a dead man.

But the old mechanism of revolts and repression doesn’t work anymore today. In fact, it has reversed itself. Violence no longer leads to subjugation, but rather rage and resistance, and more violence begets even more rage. The rules of Hama no longer apply, not even in Hama.

Complex Situation

The demonstrations continue in Hama, an old city on the Orontes River, where more than 60 people were shot dead on June 3. But the police and the army have withdrawn from the city center in the meantime. The military has blocked off access to Hama via the highway from Damascus. But the picture changes as soon as one reaches the city via secondary roads. Every evening, people take to the streets — white-collar workers, farmers, businesspeople — and no one stops them. They have defied the fear of being killed, and yet they still stop at a red light. They clean the streets, and volunteers distribute water and food.

A statue of Assad in the center of the town has disappeared. It was not destroyed, however, “but removed by the police,” says a man in his early 30s, who clearly finds this amusing. He says that he grew up with fear, and that fear has been with him his entire life. “To overcome that fear, I marched along with them every day,” he says, “even after I was injured 10 days ago and saw others dying in front of me.” He wife is pregnant and about to give birth. “I want my daughter to grow up in freedom,” he says.

The residents of the surrounding Sunni villages are increasingly fearful that Maher Assad’s Republican Guard troops could appear any day. “We have bought weapons,” says Abu Mahmoud, a farmer from the village of Mala.

The situation in the country is contradictory. In Kabun, a suburb in northeastern Damascus, the protesters, now unopposed, take to the streets every evening. When they pass the local police academy, they salute and chant: “The police want the overthrow of the regime!” Then they keep walking, unchallenged. In the Kurdish regions of northeastern Syria, the army has reportedly also stopped shooting.

Indiscriminate Violence

In the northwest, on the other hand, the killings are becoming more and more gruesome and indiscriminate. Two weeks ago, the regime announced that “armed groups” had killed 120 soldiers in Jisr al-Shughour. The news was surprising, given that the country has had up to a dozen competing intelligence agencies for decades, each branch of the military had its own intelligence agency, and all of these agencies were kept in check by other groups of spies bitterly competing with each other. It was a system Hafez Assad had carefully and deliberately devised. To this day, there is a saying that whenever two Syrians are sitting together, there is always someone from an intelligence agency between them.

Hence it was hard to believe that, in this police state, mysterious “armed groups” had apparently managed to kill 120 soldiers and then disappear without trace and without suffering any casualties of their own. The regime might as well have reported an invasion by extraterrestrials.

Regardless of its veracity, the story of the 120 dead soldiers spread. Who had killed them? Regime opponents quickly came up with their own version of the alleged incident: The men had refused to obey an order to fire at unarmed demonstrators and had therefore been executed — shot in the back by their own officers and intelligence agents. It soon became clear that this story was also false and that, in fact, there were no 120 dead soldiers. Instead, 20 to 30 people, some of them soldiers, had been shot dead by local residents defending their city.

Provocateurs at Large

A cameraman with the state television station, who was sent to Jisr al-Shughour by the military, shakes his head as he describes how his team suddenly came under fire. According to the official story, “terrorists” were supposedly to blame for the shooting, he recalls. “But there was no one there. The shots were coming from the direction we had come from, and they suddenly stopped. The only people there were the soldiers.”

It is a paradoxical propaganda strategy. Assad’s intelligence services are secretly inciting the very violence that Assad is publicly warning against. They are provoking the beginnings of the very civil war against which the regime has portrayed itself as a bulwark for years. In March, the Shabiha, a plainclothes militia, was allegedly active in the region near Latakia. There, militia members apparently masqueraded as an Alawite mob in Sunni areas, and as a Sunni mob in Alawite areas, in a bid to incite violence between the two groups.

A relative of people living in the village of Qafr Yeh says that local provocateurs were caught trying to burn down the houses of Sunnis. “The elders from both groups there got together and forced the provocateurs to leave the village,” says the relative. “But this doesn’t work everywhere.”

In Damascus, the government propaganda machine initially distributed fake images of burning churches. Then it was said that President Assad had given in to demands to rehire hundreds of female teachers who wore the full veil and had been dismissed some time ago. But no one had made such a demand. Instead, Assad is simply orchestrating a compromise with the Sunni hardliners so that he can portray himself as a protector of the Christians — against precisely those radicals he is supporting.

Who’s in Charge?

Many Syrians, who are accustomed to the most absurd of plots, are now asking themselves a completely different question: Who exactly is in charge in Damascus? This is becoming less and less clear with each new day of protests, killings, senseless propaganda and presidential silence. In a world that, after decades of prescribed lies, automatically lends credence to every rumor, the tiniest details can soon mushroom into conspiracy theories.

On the fifth floor of the Al-Shami Hospital in Damascus, where senior members of the regime are treated, guards were posted in the hallways and in front of elevators for an entire week in April. A rumor quickly spread that the president’s brother Maher Assad had shot Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa, after he had complained bitterly about the indiscriminate killing in his native region of Daraa.

There was a rumor that it was because of Maher Assad that Bouthaina Shaaban, the president’s spokeswoman, was no longer appearing on television. Assad had allegedly slapped her after she had complained about being publicly humiliated and called a liar. She had said that the people in Daraa were protesting for a justified cause, and that from then on, no one there would be shot. But Maher Assad’s thugs were back to shooting protesters the next day.

There is no evidence to support any of this, but neither is there evidence that it is false. And why did President Assad refuse to take United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s telephone call recently? Could it be that Assad was no longer in charge? Has his brother Maher, the supreme commander of the military, already turned himself into the country’s de facto leader with his wave of killings?

 

Regime Is Running Out of Money

The president has been silent for weeks, a silence that made the words of another Syrian seem all the more striking. Ironically, it was Rami Makhlouf, Assad’s cousin on his mother’s side and the richest of the greedy flock of relatives, who gave an interview to the New York Times on May 9. Makhlouf, the most reviled man in the country, controls Syria’s largest mobile phone company, a construction group, insurance companies, banks and the first chain of duty-free supermarkets.

In 2008, the US government accused Makhlouf of using the Syrian intelligence agencies to threaten his business rivals. The very first groups of protesters were chanting “Rami, harami,” or “Rami, the thief.” In the Times interview, he whispered dark warnings in the style of a Mafia godfather. “Nobody can guarantee what will happen after, God forbid, anything happens to this regime,” Makhlouf said, adding: “Don’t let us suffer, don’t put a lot of pressure on the president, don’t push Syria to do anything it is not happy to do.” Although the president has the last word, Makhlouf said, policies are formulated as “a joint decision.”

Makhlouf also put to rest the half-century-old doctrine that Israel is the enemy. So far the Syrians have guaranteed peace in Israel, Makhlouf said, but this would not continue if the Assad family were not allowed to remain in power. “If there is no stability here, there’s no way there will be stability in Israel,” he said.

His cousin Bashar was reportedly beside himself with rage over the interview. Two days later, the Syrian ambassador in Washington sheepishly distanced himself from Makhlouf’s remarks, saying that the businessman had clearly not been speaking on behalf of the Syrian government, that his words reflected his personal views, and that he could absolutely not be associated with official functions in Syria.

The bombshell came last Thursday, when the tycoon declared that he would sell his businesses, give the proceeds to the poor and devote himself to charitable work from now on. This could not have been a voluntary decision. The departure of the hated Makhlouf is urgently needed.

The Saudi Approach

When the protests began, President Assad somewhat prematurely promised benefits based on the Saudi Arabian model: salary increases of up to 30 percent for government employees, as well as a 25-percent reduction in the price of diesel fuel, which was already heavily subsidized. But now Syrian oil is running low, foreign tourists and investors are staying away and money is getting tight. The president recently told associates that the promises were not a good idea, saying: “We don’t have the money for it!” According to an economic expert with a Western embassy in Damascus, Bashad’s wealthy cousin is being coerced to save the regime from bankruptcy.

The lurching family business is still keeping itself afloat, partly because no alternatives are in sight yet. The prominent civil rights activists who penned the “Damascus Declaration” in 2005 have a program, but no followers. The protest movement in the streets has followers, but no program that extends beyond deposing the regime.

The two sides are only gradually coming together. But hardly anything is more urgently needed than unity, insists one of the organizers of a first joint conference. He lists all the groups and subgroups of eternal members of the opposition: “The Communists, the Nasserists, the signatories to the Damascus Declaration, the intellectuals — they all have to join forces now!” he says. The only problem, the organizer claims, is that they haven’t been able to find the right location for a meeting yet — a new experience for small groups of dissidents who were previously used to meeting in smoke-filled back rooms. Apparently none of the large hotels in Damascus is willing to host their conference. “We don’t want it for free — we’ll pay for it. But the managers have said quite openly: We have no interest in the revolution.”

This is unfortunately the opposition’s position, he says with a grim smile, as he smokes a water pipe in a café. An uprising is raging outside, he adds, and they still haven’t found a hotel willing to rent them a conference room.

Good Coffee

The house of Assad will not fall that quickly, says the Syrian manager of the local office of a foreign company. His father, a wanted member of the opposition, was forced to flee the country and died, impoverished, in exile. He says that he wants to go to the “Gemini,” one of the elegant cafés in a park on Abu Rumani street. It belongs to the son of Muhammad al-Khuly, the former head of the air force intelligence agency, who allegedly ordered an assassin to put his unknowing, pregnant girlfriend, together with explosives, on board an El Al flight to Tel Aviv in 1986. The Gemini may be a curious choice but, as he says, “the cappuccino is so good there!”

The location is idyllic and the Gemini is full. Prices there are unaffordable for most Syrians. “No one here defends the regime out of conviction,” the manager says, “not even the Alawites. We have become a nation of opportunists. It doesn’t matter who’s in charge, as long as we have our peace and quiet.” That was always the deal with the regime: It would guarantee peace and stability, and in return Syrians would accept the fact that “the mafia treats the country like its private property.”

But now the basis of this unspoken agreement is disappearing, says the manager, explaining that the regime can no longer hold up its end of the deal: peace and stability.

The cappuccino arrives, complete with the brown outline of a fern drawn into the white foam. The manager takes a spoonful of sugar and pours it gingerly onto the foam. The sugar stays on top. “Like our regime,” he says. “It simply isn’t going under, the way the regimes did in Egypt and Tunisia.” After a few seconds, the first sugar crystals melt into the foam, and soon the little pile of sugar begins disintegrating at the edges. “It’s the same way here. More people, including me, are taking a wait-and-see approach, but the less stability remains, the more people will turn away.”

In fact, even the affluent neighborhoods where there have been no protest marches to date have been eroding for some time. Tansim Kafr Souseh in western Damascus, where high-end condominium buildings were built in recent years and apartments sell for half a million to a million US dollars, is more likely to be the home of the regime’s beneficiaries than its opponents. Nevertheless, the police have also closed a park in the middle of this upmarket neighborhood.

A Fateful Friday at the Mosque

“Officially, it was for renovations,” scoffs a doctor who could afford to move there. “The truth is that they are afraid whenever more than three people congregate anywhere.” He had been watching the blurred videos of the clashes in Daraa and Jisr al-Shughour on a satellite broadcaster’s station on television until now, he says. That was until the Friday before last, when the doctor, a moderately religious Sunni Muslim, attended Friday prayers, as he often does, at the ostentatious Rifai Mosque.

There had already been clashes in front of the mosque once before, on April 1. He had never felt that the imam, Osama Rifai, the grandson of the mosque’s founder, had a political agenda, but instead had had the impression that he preached uplifting messages about moral conduct.

On that Friday, says the doctor, the 60-year-old imam had begun his sermon very quietly by asking: “Why did Bouazizi set himself on fire?” He was referring to the Tunisian vegetable merchant whose suicide became the spark that triggered the Arab revolutions. “Because he was being treated unjustly. We too are experiencing injustice!”

The doctor remembers how quiet the congregation was at that point. “We all held our breath and thought to ourselves: When will he be arrested? When will we be arrested?” According to the doctor, hardly anyone was pleased about the imam’s courage. “We were all just afraid.”

Rifai continued to speak, connecting the dots between the injustices inflicted on the street vendor and the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, as well as the acts of violence in Syria. He was outspoken in his criticism: “What is this, using tanks to shoot at protesters who might be carrying pistols, at most? Isn’t that injustice?”

And what happened next? Nothing, says the doctor. No one was arrested.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

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Syrian dissidents unite to oust Assad

By Ahed Alhendi

Reuters,
Jun 16, 2011 10:32 EDT

Twenty years ago, I was a school kid chanting with my peers, “Our leader forever, the father, Hafez Assad!” Back then, I could not have imagined that one day I would see his statues destroyed all over Syria by the people — a sight now common within the country.

Most of those demonstrating in Syria are young people who were taught to love and adore our only president, and later his son, Bashar. As young Syrians, we have always treated the Assads as something of a holy family. We all were forced to join the Baath Party Pioneer Organization at the age of six and we grew up soaking in the Assads’ propaganda — the school system, the single TV station, the official newspaper; they all had a picture of Assad as their logos.

Now, the voices of freedom are sounding louder than the engines of armored vehicles and the whistling of tanks shells. Bashar Assad thought that the military would intimidate and quiet the protesters, but the shout “Bashar must go!” is only getting louder.

Those shouts, however, are not particularly well-organized. Because Syria has been ruled by the Assad clan for more than 40 years, the country’s political life is effectively nonexistent. Nearly all leaders and members of serious opposition parties — both Islamic and secular — have been kidnapped, exiled, jailed or killed.

The year 2000 brought with it a so-called “Western-educated doctor” to inherit the “republic” from his father. Syrian dissidents thought that they would be able to recover from three bloody decades of Hafez’s rule that resulted in more than 30,000 deaths and 15,000 forced deportations.
 The exhausted opposition groups succeeded in forming an alliance called the Damascus Declaration. This alliance brought together a multitude of diverse groups calling for democratic change within the country, creating what was widely seen as a shadow government.

The regime, however, cracked down on this effort, arresting many of its members and jailing twelve top opposition leaders, as well as forcing the remnants of some of these groups to make statements denouncing the Damascus Declaration for allegedly serving an American agenda. This sucked the oxygen out of opposition efforts, cutting short the movement’s momentum and denying it much-needed press coverage, effectively killing the Declaration.

Even though rebelling against dictators became fashionable in the Arab world this year, many thought that Syria was immune to change. March 15th, however, was a turning point. On that day, only a few people marched in the heart of Damascus calling for freedom. Now, almost three months later, most of Syria’s large cities are seeing tens of thousands of demonstrators calling on Assad to step down.

Because Syrians were not ready for such momentous change, political parties have so far played a minor role in the uprising. Recently, however, they have begun to play their parts. The organizers of the demonstrations formed “local coordinates” that have been organizing demonstrations all over Syria. These groups began with dedicated cores of just a few members who would go into the streets and initiate demonstrations. They quickly became far more organized; each small neighborhood now has a committee that organizes the protest right down to the placards that will be held by demonstrators, and these groups from each town coordinate across the country in a highly organized national movement.

The majority of these groups are made up of university students and democratic activists, such as Razan Zaitouneh, a Syrian feminist. The role of religious movements is very limited, even though most demonstrations start at a mosque — a logistical matter, as mosques are the only places where people can gather without arousing suspicion.

I speak with the leaders of these groups on a daily basis. Most of them are young and unaligned with any formal political movement. They embody the spirit of the Damascus Declaration, which they hope to revive at a conference that just took place in Antalya, Turkey, for Syrian political parties, businessmen and tribal leaders.

What makes this most recent conference different from the others, different even than the relatively strong opposition movements of the 1980s, is the participation of the tribes. Today, the opposition is far more diverse and cohesive; all the tribes — businessmen, youth leaders, Muslim Brotherhood leaders, and Kurds — were represented at Antalya.

 At the end of the conference, the participants voted in favor of establishing a 31-member national committee with four members, one each from the Muslim Brotherhood, Kurds, tribal leaders, and Damascus Declaration members, as well as 15 independents and young people.

All signs point to further brutal crackdown by the regime. The number of protesters is increasing so fast that the security forces cannot imprison all of them, and unrest is spreading within the country. Unfortunately, the Syrian people have no international powers on their side, while Assad’s regime is being backed by its allies in Russia, China and Iran (a fact protesters acknowledge by burning the flags of the regime’s allies).

Assad’s legitimacy has fallen particularly after his security forces killed dozens in the city of Hama, a symbol of his father’s brutality. Statues of Assad have been removed recently by government officers in Hama and Dair Al Zor out of fear that protesters will destroy them, indicating just how bad the regime’s image is within the country. But calls for this ruthless dictator to reform are misplaced and even dangerous. Dissidents throughout Syria know that the Assad regime will end up on the ash-heap of history; we hope the West realizes this too.

Alhendi, a former political prisoner in Syria, jailed for online activities, is the Arabic programs coordinator at CyberDissidents.org, a New York based human rights organization.

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Halting the Egyptian Drift

by Jagdish N. Singh

BESA Center Perspectives
 Paper No. 145,
 June 19, 2011

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Developments in post-Mubarak Egypt are beginning to mirror the process of Islamization that took place in Iran following the 1979 revolution. The Muslim Brotherhood is gaining support, while progressive forces – those that hoped to bring democracy to Egypt – have fallen silent. It may be up to a third party to prevent Egypt from becoming the next Iran.

One wonders if Egypt today is on the road to becoming another post-Shah Iran. After the fall of the Shah the 1970s, Iran’s progressive forces became passive, leaving the great Persian civilization at the mercy of far more anti-democratic elements than the regime they had fought against. The pattern developing in Egypt in the wake of the “Arab Spring” looks more or less similar. With the fall of the relatively modern Mubarak regime, anti-social and anti-modern elements, led by the Muslim Brotherhood, are gaining strength and popularity.

A case in point: Egyptian Islamic theologian Yusuf al-Qaradawi was welcomed back to Egypt after a 50-year hiatus and a 30-year ban from leading weekly Friday prayers. Best known for his program ash-Shariah wal-Hayat (“Shariah and Life”), broadcast on Al Jazeera and Islam Online, Qaradawi has long played a prominent role within the intellectual and spiritual leadership of the Brotherhood. His obscurantist philosophy, support of terrorism, and advocacy for killing the Jews have been judged so harmful – socially, economically and culturally – that countries such as the US and the UK have prohibited him from entering. Even many Muslim academics in Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the Palestinian territories have condemned him for giving sacred Islam “a bad name.”

Since the Muslim Brotherhood is now the single largest political group in Egypt, with an estimated 600,000 members, all other groups that matter in the country’s politics have started rallying behind it to secure their eventual share of the national power cake. The Brotherhood was initially part of the Coalition of Young Revolutionaries, which led the protests against President Mubarak at Tahrir Square. However, after toppling the dictatorship, the more progressive members of this revolutionary alliance – the Qatar-based Academy of Change, former International Atomic Energy Agency Chief Mohamed El- Baradei and his associates, Egyptian women activists, etc. – have become marginalized, now playing second fiddle to the rising Islamist group.

Consequently, those who, until recently, praised the fallen Mubarak have suddenly aligned themselves with the Brotherhood. One such example is Sheikh Ahmad Mohamed al-Tayeb, the Imam of the al-Azhar Mosque – one of the most important Sunni religious centers. Sounding like a radical jihadist, Tayeb recently branded the killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden an act of American “piracy” and called his burial at sea a “moral crime” that was “against Islamic law.” He has also asserted that the main cause of terrorism is Israel’s existence and actions as well as Western countries’ attempts to “dominate the Arab world.” Such statements are likely to help the Brotherhood garner critical Sunni support in Egypt’s upcoming parliamentary elections.

Another individual who appears to have joined the Brotherhood bandwagon is former Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa. Various reports suggest that Moussa and the Brotherhood have reached an understanding whereby the Brotherhood will not field a candidate against Moussa in the elections, enabling him to win the presidency. In return, Moussa will rubber-stamp all legislation passed by the Brotherhood bloc (perhaps a majority bloc) in parliament.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s work towards creating an Islamic state in Egypt closely resembles Ayatollah Khomeini’s overhaul of the Iranian political system post-1979 Revolution. The Brotherhood shares a common ideology with the Iranian clergy – to promote Islam not just as a religion but as a belief system governing all aspects of political, economic and social life.

There is genuine concern that once the Brotherhood manages to establish itself within the country’s political system, persecution of both Muslim and non-Muslim minorities will grow. There have been, of late, increased attacks on the Copts – a Christian sect that makes up roughly 10 percent of the Egyptian population – by Islamic extremists. While previously subjected to persecution of various kinds, they have begun to feel far more frightened in the post-Mubarak era.

The Supreme Council of Armed Forces, led by Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, could play a critical role in halting the Brotherhood’s momentum. Because of its relatively modernist nature and orientation, it already holds the trust and goodwill of the country’s
silent masses. The Council could use this type of platform for combating the lack of democracy and development that has caused the recent unrest in Egypt.

Currently the de facto ruler until parliamentary elections are held, the Council should take advantage of its position to promote progressive leadership based on pluralism, non- violence and democracy. Simultaneously, the Council could make serious efforts to improve the country’s social sector.
According to a recent Moshe Dayan Center study, the population of Egypt (83 million in 2009) is growing by about 1.8% a year and that of working age by 2.2%. But there has been little employment generation. Some 40% of its population today earns an income of $2 per day or less. Over 87% of Egyptian households have an annual income of less than $1,000. The inflation rate in 2010 increased by 12% and food prices specifically rose by 20%. Hundreds of thousands are living in graveyards and in other substandard accommodations. Furthermore, the current regime has not invested properly in education, with over 30% of its adult population being illiterate.

Social reform efforts could give a significant boost to the strength and popularity of genuine progressive democratic forces in Egypt. Given its strategic and economic interests in the region, the West could join the efforts of the Egyptian Council by invoking some kind of Marshall Plan, such as that which was adopted by the US in 1947-1951 to assist the rebuilding and economic regeneration efforts in war-torn Europe.

However, given that anti-Western attitudes run very strong in the Arab world in general and Egypt in particular, outsiders will have to be very careful when planning any such economic stimulus so that it indeed benefits the have-nots in Egypt. Aid that is not properly monitored will only benefit the corrupt and alienate the public, and provide anti- democratic forces with ammunition for a takeover.

But, alas, we must also humbly take note: The ability of Westerners to influence domestic outcomes in the Arab world is ultimately quite limited.

Jagdish N. Singh is a senior Indian journalist based in New Delhi.

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