Salaam
Interesting interview, looks like Jolani and co going through a rebranding excercise.
Interesting interview, looks like Jolani and co going through a rebranding excercise.
Oh Syria the victory is coming
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Salaam
Another update
Blurb
In an exclusive interview with MEE, US journalist Bilal Abdul Kareem talks for the first time about the six months he spent in a Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham prison in Syria.
Abdul Kareem, who has been reporting from opposition-held Syria since 2012, believes he was arrested for reporting on allegations of torture against the group - and says he heard the screams of prisoners during his own captivity.
Admitting he was putting himself in jeopardy by talking to MEE, Abdul Kareem accused HTS leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani of lying about conditions in the militant group's prisons, and said he was "unfit to rule".
EXCLUSIVE: Bilal Abdul Kareem breaks silence over HTS detention in Syria
US journalist Bilal Abdul Kareem has broken his silence to speak for the first time about his arrest and months-long detention by militant group Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in Syria's Idlib province.
Speaking exclusively to Middle East Eye, Abdul Kareem accused Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the HTS leader, of being “unfit to rule” and of lying about conditions in the organisation's prisons.
Jolani denied in an interview broadcast this week on the US PBS network that detainees held by the group were being tortured.
Abdul Kareem is currently banned by HTS from reporting, or appearing on social media, as a condition of his release from prison in February. He admitted he was putting himself in jeopardy by speaking out against the group, though he said he had left the territory under HTS control.
HTS is an alliance of Islamist militant factions which has controlled most of Idlib since 2017 and has been one of the most effective fighting opposition fighting forces during Syria's decade-long civil war. But it is considered a terrorist organisation by the UN, the US and many other Western countries and has been accused of atrocities, executions and war crimes by human rights monitors.
Jolani, its leader, formerly commanded the Nusra Front (Jabhat al-Nusra), which was al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria until 2016 when it changed its name to Jabhat Fatah al-Sham.
Abdul Kareem told MEE he had been threatened with physical abuse himself and kept mostly in solitary confinement for more than six months after his arrest last August. He said he had frequently heard the sound of other prisoners being tortured in nearby cells.
“Almost every day of every week, I had to listen to the screams of torture just a few metres away from me. Everyone in the prisons can always hear the torture,” he told MEE.
“Just to sum up the whole thing: Abu Mohamed al-Jolani, point blank, he lied.”
Abdul Kareem has been reporting from opposition-held areas of Syria since 2012, mostly for his own On the Ground News platform, and has been based in the country since 2014. He has contributed to MEE, and has also worked with CNN, the BBC and Sky News.
He is best known for his reporting from the final days of the battle of eastern Aleppo in December 2016, when he was evacuated alongside opposition fighters as part of a deal in which rebel-held areas of the city were handed over to Syrian government control.
Threatened with beatings
Abdul Kareem told MEE he had been arrested after raising concerns about torture in HTS prisons in his own reporting. One prominent case he covered was that of Tauqir Sharif, a British aid worker who said he had been restrained in a tyre and beaten while in HTS custody.
After his arrest, Abdul Kareem said he had been handcuffed and blindfolded and subjected to daily questioning in which he was threatened with beatings by his interrogator.
“He said: 'We need to ask you some questions. If your answers are not forthcoming, then we do have the authority to physically do things to you so that you will tell us what we need to know'. They lined me up against the wall as if they were about to start beating on me.”
Abdul Kareem said he was eventually sent back to his cell and was not subjected to any kind of physical torture. “I had no lawyer, I had no access to anybody on the outside. I was just gone. That was my situation.”
Four-and-a-half months later, guards came to Abdul Kareem's cell. “They put a blindfold on me and shackles on my hands. Then they put me in a van and they took me to another location, removed the shackles, removed the blindfold and said: 'Your trial is about to start.'"
He was subsequently sentenced to 12 months in prison on charges including “working with groups that harm public security", "incitement" against the authorities, and "publishing and promoting lies that affect institutions without evidence or proof".
Abdul Kareem said he could not help himself laughing when he was found guilty on all charges a few weeks later. “I thought it was the funniest thing. They didn't like that so much. They said: 'Why are you laughing?' I said: 'I'm laughing because I used to do stand-up comedy, but I can't write jokes like you guys'. “I said: 'There is no justice in this. There is no Islamic justice, no secular justice. There's no justice in this at all.'”
Following his sentencing, Abdul Kareem says he was offered the prospect of an early release if he agreed to apologise as part of a plea for clemency. He says he refused to do so and was prepared to serve the full 12-month sentence.
Abdul Kareem was eventually released on 17 February following what HTS described as a petition submitted by the elders of Idlib's Atmeh region.
Amicable relationship
Abdul Kareem told MEE that he had once enjoyed an amicable relationship with HTS, as well as with other opposition groups fighting against Syrian government forces and their allies, whom he had often accompanied to battlefronts to report on the conflict.
He said he had sought to give HTS and its previous iterations an opportunity to speak when they were being accused of terrorism – access that has led some to describe him as a “jihadist propagandist”.
But he said HTS had become increasingly hostile to him since 2018, as his reporting grew more critical of the group's shortcomings after it had established itself as the de facto authority in Idlib.
“Now, what was the change that happened?" he told MEE. " The change is simple. They came to power... and then they start doing things other than that which they said. They promised to bring Islamic rule. They didn't do it. They promised to bring justice. They didn't do it. I was obligated to report those shortcomings. And that's when they turned hostile to me.”
Allegations of HTS's and its predecessors' involvement in arbitrary detention and torture predate its rise to power in Idlib. A United Nations Human Rights Council report published in March by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic cited allegations of detention-related violations linked to HTS and related groups dating back to 2011.
It said HTS had been “arbitrarily detaining civilians in a systematic effort to stifle dissent” and had established “punishment prisons” in which “torture and ill-treatment were widespread”.
Abdul Kareem said he had sought to report on earlier complaints of torture against HTS, but that most of those making allegations were not prepared to go on camera or identify themselves.
He cited a report by On the Ground News in April 2019 in which a mother said that her son, Marwan al-Umqi, had been tortured to death in an HTS prison as a “turning point” in his relationship with the group.
Their politics towards me changed," Abdul Kareem said. "And some of their members said to me: 'Bilal we thought you were cool'.
And I said: 'Well, you know what? If covering up your torture means that I'm cool, then go back and tell them that I'm not cool and I'm not going to be cool because that's not what I came here for.'”
HTS has repeatedly denied allegations that it mistreats and tortures prisoners.
In an interview with PBS's Frontline, filmed in February but broadcast only on Tuesday, Jolani said there was “no torture” in Idlib and suggested that the region's prisons were under the control of the Salvation Government, the HTS-backed civilian government, rather than the group itself.
“There is no torture. This is completely rejected,” said Jolani.
“And we are not responsible for it, arresting, torturing and the whole process at the courts. The judicial corps is completely independent in the liberated zones. It is not ours. There is an entire government here.”
'Unfit to rule'
But Abdul Kareem said Jolani and those in HTS who defended him were guilty of condoning the same abuses they had once condemned when carried out by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's security forces.
Abdul Kareem said that one HTS official he had spoken to had tried to defend Jolani's remarks by arguing that the physical abuse meted out to prisoners did not amount to torture and was permitted as a form of punishment to make them admit their wrongdoings.
“I said to him, well, issue number one, you're starting to sound like the Americans: 'We're not calling it torture. We're calling it enhanced interrogation techniques.' Torture by any other name is still torture.
“The second thing is beating people, hanging them for long periods of time, whippings on the soles of their feet and the backs of their legs. These are the things that your leader, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani condemned the Assad regime for doing. How is it that he's now doing the exact same thing?”
Abdul Kareem said that he did not consider Jolani to be a terrorist because HTS had not sought to carry out attacks outside of Syria. But he said he would not remain silent about Jolani's shortcomings as a leader, and suggested he was courting Western legitimacy by speaking to PBS.
“I don't think he's a terrorist. I think he's unfit to rule if he's going to continue on the path that he's continuing on now. So if he wants Western legitimacy and he wants to go after that, that's fine. That's his business. But if he thinks that I'm going to stay silent while he tortures and indefinitely detains his way to power, as we say in America, I didn't come to Vegas to lose.”
Abdul Kareem also dismissed the Salvation Government as a sham. “Nobody here gives any great credence to the Salvation Government,” he said. “I doubt that there's one in a hundred people who could even tell you who the president of the Salvation Government is, because everyone knows that he wields no power.” In fact the Salvation Government is headed by a prime minister, currently Ali Keda who has been in office since 2019.
Abdul Kareem told MEE he had now left HTS-controlled territory because of concerns for his own safety after being told by HTS officials that he was considered a security threat.
“They told me that they considered me to be more of a threat in these territories than an ISIS suicide bomber. And the reason he said that was 'because people listen to you'. So I was forced to leave their territories. I could either just be quiet and open up a hot dog [stall] or a pizzeria. Or I could say I'm going to change my location and I'm going to continue to report.”
But he said he remained committed to reporting on events in Syria, despite the risks. “I think the Syrian people have tremendous resiliency, ingenuity, and I think that they're going to come out on top in the end. It's going to cost. It's important for everybody to understand that if you want real change it doesn't happen overnight.
“So my fight continues. And as long as I'm effective, then I'll continue to be here. When I'm not effective any more, I'll pick up my marbles and go.”
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/...areem-breaks-silence-over-hts-detention-syria
Another update
Blurb
In an exclusive interview with MEE, US journalist Bilal Abdul Kareem talks for the first time about the six months he spent in a Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham prison in Syria.
Abdul Kareem, who has been reporting from opposition-held Syria since 2012, believes he was arrested for reporting on allegations of torture against the group - and says he heard the screams of prisoners during his own captivity.
Admitting he was putting himself in jeopardy by talking to MEE, Abdul Kareem accused HTS leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani of lying about conditions in the militant group's prisons, and said he was "unfit to rule".
EXCLUSIVE: Bilal Abdul Kareem breaks silence over HTS detention in Syria
US journalist Bilal Abdul Kareem has broken his silence to speak for the first time about his arrest and months-long detention by militant group Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in Syria's Idlib province.
Speaking exclusively to Middle East Eye, Abdul Kareem accused Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the HTS leader, of being “unfit to rule” and of lying about conditions in the organisation's prisons.
Jolani denied in an interview broadcast this week on the US PBS network that detainees held by the group were being tortured.
Abdul Kareem is currently banned by HTS from reporting, or appearing on social media, as a condition of his release from prison in February. He admitted he was putting himself in jeopardy by speaking out against the group, though he said he had left the territory under HTS control.
HTS is an alliance of Islamist militant factions which has controlled most of Idlib since 2017 and has been one of the most effective fighting opposition fighting forces during Syria's decade-long civil war. But it is considered a terrorist organisation by the UN, the US and many other Western countries and has been accused of atrocities, executions and war crimes by human rights monitors.
Jolani, its leader, formerly commanded the Nusra Front (Jabhat al-Nusra), which was al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria until 2016 when it changed its name to Jabhat Fatah al-Sham.
Abdul Kareem told MEE he had been threatened with physical abuse himself and kept mostly in solitary confinement for more than six months after his arrest last August. He said he had frequently heard the sound of other prisoners being tortured in nearby cells.
“Almost every day of every week, I had to listen to the screams of torture just a few metres away from me. Everyone in the prisons can always hear the torture,” he told MEE.
“Just to sum up the whole thing: Abu Mohamed al-Jolani, point blank, he lied.”
Abdul Kareem has been reporting from opposition-held areas of Syria since 2012, mostly for his own On the Ground News platform, and has been based in the country since 2014. He has contributed to MEE, and has also worked with CNN, the BBC and Sky News.
He is best known for his reporting from the final days of the battle of eastern Aleppo in December 2016, when he was evacuated alongside opposition fighters as part of a deal in which rebel-held areas of the city were handed over to Syrian government control.
Threatened with beatings
Abdul Kareem told MEE he had been arrested after raising concerns about torture in HTS prisons in his own reporting. One prominent case he covered was that of Tauqir Sharif, a British aid worker who said he had been restrained in a tyre and beaten while in HTS custody.
After his arrest, Abdul Kareem said he had been handcuffed and blindfolded and subjected to daily questioning in which he was threatened with beatings by his interrogator.
“He said: 'We need to ask you some questions. If your answers are not forthcoming, then we do have the authority to physically do things to you so that you will tell us what we need to know'. They lined me up against the wall as if they were about to start beating on me.”
Abdul Kareem said he was eventually sent back to his cell and was not subjected to any kind of physical torture. “I had no lawyer, I had no access to anybody on the outside. I was just gone. That was my situation.”
Four-and-a-half months later, guards came to Abdul Kareem's cell. “They put a blindfold on me and shackles on my hands. Then they put me in a van and they took me to another location, removed the shackles, removed the blindfold and said: 'Your trial is about to start.'"
He was subsequently sentenced to 12 months in prison on charges including “working with groups that harm public security", "incitement" against the authorities, and "publishing and promoting lies that affect institutions without evidence or proof".
Abdul Kareem said he could not help himself laughing when he was found guilty on all charges a few weeks later. “I thought it was the funniest thing. They didn't like that so much. They said: 'Why are you laughing?' I said: 'I'm laughing because I used to do stand-up comedy, but I can't write jokes like you guys'. “I said: 'There is no justice in this. There is no Islamic justice, no secular justice. There's no justice in this at all.'”
Following his sentencing, Abdul Kareem says he was offered the prospect of an early release if he agreed to apologise as part of a plea for clemency. He says he refused to do so and was prepared to serve the full 12-month sentence.
Abdul Kareem was eventually released on 17 February following what HTS described as a petition submitted by the elders of Idlib's Atmeh region.
Amicable relationship
Abdul Kareem told MEE that he had once enjoyed an amicable relationship with HTS, as well as with other opposition groups fighting against Syrian government forces and their allies, whom he had often accompanied to battlefronts to report on the conflict.
He said he had sought to give HTS and its previous iterations an opportunity to speak when they were being accused of terrorism – access that has led some to describe him as a “jihadist propagandist”.
But he said HTS had become increasingly hostile to him since 2018, as his reporting grew more critical of the group's shortcomings after it had established itself as the de facto authority in Idlib.
“Now, what was the change that happened?" he told MEE. " The change is simple. They came to power... and then they start doing things other than that which they said. They promised to bring Islamic rule. They didn't do it. They promised to bring justice. They didn't do it. I was obligated to report those shortcomings. And that's when they turned hostile to me.”
Allegations of HTS's and its predecessors' involvement in arbitrary detention and torture predate its rise to power in Idlib. A United Nations Human Rights Council report published in March by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic cited allegations of detention-related violations linked to HTS and related groups dating back to 2011.
It said HTS had been “arbitrarily detaining civilians in a systematic effort to stifle dissent” and had established “punishment prisons” in which “torture and ill-treatment were widespread”.
Abdul Kareem said he had sought to report on earlier complaints of torture against HTS, but that most of those making allegations were not prepared to go on camera or identify themselves.
He cited a report by On the Ground News in April 2019 in which a mother said that her son, Marwan al-Umqi, had been tortured to death in an HTS prison as a “turning point” in his relationship with the group.
Their politics towards me changed," Abdul Kareem said. "And some of their members said to me: 'Bilal we thought you were cool'.
And I said: 'Well, you know what? If covering up your torture means that I'm cool, then go back and tell them that I'm not cool and I'm not going to be cool because that's not what I came here for.'”
HTS has repeatedly denied allegations that it mistreats and tortures prisoners.
In an interview with PBS's Frontline, filmed in February but broadcast only on Tuesday, Jolani said there was “no torture” in Idlib and suggested that the region's prisons were under the control of the Salvation Government, the HTS-backed civilian government, rather than the group itself.
“There is no torture. This is completely rejected,” said Jolani.
“And we are not responsible for it, arresting, torturing and the whole process at the courts. The judicial corps is completely independent in the liberated zones. It is not ours. There is an entire government here.”
'Unfit to rule'
But Abdul Kareem said Jolani and those in HTS who defended him were guilty of condoning the same abuses they had once condemned when carried out by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's security forces.
Abdul Kareem said that one HTS official he had spoken to had tried to defend Jolani's remarks by arguing that the physical abuse meted out to prisoners did not amount to torture and was permitted as a form of punishment to make them admit their wrongdoings.
“I said to him, well, issue number one, you're starting to sound like the Americans: 'We're not calling it torture. We're calling it enhanced interrogation techniques.' Torture by any other name is still torture.
“The second thing is beating people, hanging them for long periods of time, whippings on the soles of their feet and the backs of their legs. These are the things that your leader, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani condemned the Assad regime for doing. How is it that he's now doing the exact same thing?”
Abdul Kareem said that he did not consider Jolani to be a terrorist because HTS had not sought to carry out attacks outside of Syria. But he said he would not remain silent about Jolani's shortcomings as a leader, and suggested he was courting Western legitimacy by speaking to PBS.
“I don't think he's a terrorist. I think he's unfit to rule if he's going to continue on the path that he's continuing on now. So if he wants Western legitimacy and he wants to go after that, that's fine. That's his business. But if he thinks that I'm going to stay silent while he tortures and indefinitely detains his way to power, as we say in America, I didn't come to Vegas to lose.”
Abdul Kareem also dismissed the Salvation Government as a sham. “Nobody here gives any great credence to the Salvation Government,” he said. “I doubt that there's one in a hundred people who could even tell you who the president of the Salvation Government is, because everyone knows that he wields no power.” In fact the Salvation Government is headed by a prime minister, currently Ali Keda who has been in office since 2019.
Abdul Kareem told MEE he had now left HTS-controlled territory because of concerns for his own safety after being told by HTS officials that he was considered a security threat.
“They told me that they considered me to be more of a threat in these territories than an ISIS suicide bomber. And the reason he said that was 'because people listen to you'. So I was forced to leave their territories. I could either just be quiet and open up a hot dog [stall] or a pizzeria. Or I could say I'm going to change my location and I'm going to continue to report.”
But he said he remained committed to reporting on events in Syria, despite the risks. “I think the Syrian people have tremendous resiliency, ingenuity, and I think that they're going to come out on top in the end. It's going to cost. It's important for everybody to understand that if you want real change it doesn't happen overnight.
“So my fight continues. And as long as I'm effective, then I'll continue to be here. When I'm not effective any more, I'll pick up my marbles and go.”
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/...areem-breaks-silence-over-hts-detention-syria
Eusra Fhaad inshaAllah
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Means AK didn't know a thing about Nusra fronts tortures back in the fitan between Isil& Nusra that earned fame as khawarij from noble Shuyookh in Syria like Abu Basir,Back then he was cool about Nusras actions debunked by people of RevolutionThis man was close to Nusra & I'm surprised he was not reporting back then.
I think Allah Ta'aala accepted some deed of AK that brought him to finally speak anti oppression.
Better late than never
I think Allah Ta'aala accepted some deed of AK that brought him to finally speak anti oppression.
Better late than never
Eusra Fhaad inshaAllah
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Jolani lost his balls & it was earlier leaked he was linked with IS secretly.
The changes in Imaan are REAL.Happening.But if only we study Islamic texts open our eyes do istekhara listen to seniors in Jihad outside Syria that's the land of khawarij in the end times& dajjals place follow good akhlaaq as we are commanded in Quran & Ahadeeth,save ourselves from oppressing others fear death in such war zone like Syria there can be found good people too& save peeps from khawarijism & be the ancestors of dajjals & I request all to gather information on khawarij in the end times & since Syria is gonna have fitan of khawarij it's incumbent upon everyone to pay heed & fear death every second with good deeds & akhlaaq for brothers and sisters,it's extremely scary...
The changes in Imaan are REAL.Happening.But if only we study Islamic texts open our eyes do istekhara listen to seniors in Jihad outside Syria that's the land of khawarij in the end times& dajjals place follow good akhlaaq as we are commanded in Quran & Ahadeeth,save ourselves from oppressing others fear death in such war zone like Syria there can be found good people too& save peeps from khawarijism & be the ancestors of dajjals & I request all to gather information on khawarij in the end times & since Syria is gonna have fitan of khawarij it's incumbent upon everyone to pay heed & fear death every second with good deeds & akhlaaq for brothers and sisters,it's extremely scary...
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Eusra Fhaad inshaAllah
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Regarding Khawarijite and Messiah ad dajjal:
There will emerge from them [khawarijites]ad dajal .
In a narration it states from their[khawarijs] treachery.And in one manuscript ‘from their ranks’And that refers to a great army ,from the ahadeeth narrated by Ibn Umar in Ibn Majah.
*They will deny dajjal of course because they unknowingly are preparing for him
*The dajjal will start in Isfahan and 70k Jews in person armour will join him
“The Dajjal would be followed by seventy thousand Jews of Isfahan wearing Persian shawls. “ (Muslim, 7034)
He then travels to iraq/syria will he declares he's Allah[Naoozub'ILLAH
[This is where he officially appears to the world
https://ton.twitter.com/i/ton/data/dm/580926467309117440/580926467351060480/OE0jqbBX.jpg:small
Listen my madhab is of Ibn Kathir and Ibn tamiya. My madhab by them is traced back to Rasul Allah(saw)
Iraq and sham are Khawarij strongholds.They will keep on appearing till last of them appears with dajjal. Many times Khawarij have appeared from there and they will keep on .
ISI fitan came from iraq and spread in sham with takfir and killings of other Mujahideen .Thats why this quote suits khwarij of Iraq and shaam at all times of their appearance. I quote this quote as it also suits present young foolish generation of IS as well as others of past.
Ibn Kathir said, “If the Kharijites ever gained power, they would corrupt the entire land, Iraq and Syria. They would not leave a boy or a girl or a man or a woman, for in their view the people have become so corrupt that they cannot be reformed except by mass killing.”
Source: Al-Bidayah wa Nihayah 10/584
قال ابن كثير إِذْ لَوْ قَوُوا هَؤُلَاءِ لَأَفْسَدُوا الْأَرْضَ كُلَّهَا عِرَاقًا وَشَامًا وَلَمْ يَتْرُكُوا طِفْلًا وَلَا طِفْلَةَ وَلَا رَجُلًا وَلَا امْرَأَةً لِأَنَّ النَّاسَ عِنْدَهُمْ قَدْ فَسَدُوا فَسَادًا لَا يُصْلِحُهُمْ إِلَّا الْقَتْلُ جُمْلَةً
10/584 البداية والنهاية ثم دخلت سنة سبع وثلاثين ذكر خروج الخوارج من الكوفة ومبارزتهم عليا رضي الله عنه بالعداوة والمخالفة
So many Fitnas related to one place and that is IRAQ.. so Noble Prophet صلی اللہ علیہ وسلم mentioning its IRAQ as a core place of Fitna has been proved at the later stages.
There will emerge from them [khawarijites]ad dajal .
In a narration it states from their[khawarijs] treachery.And in one manuscript ‘from their ranks’And that refers to a great army ,from the ahadeeth narrated by Ibn Umar in Ibn Majah.
*They will deny dajjal of course because they unknowingly are preparing for him
*The dajjal will start in Isfahan and 70k Jews in person armour will join him
“The Dajjal would be followed by seventy thousand Jews of Isfahan wearing Persian shawls. “ (Muslim, 7034)
He then travels to iraq/syria will he declares he's Allah[Naoozub'ILLAH
[This is where he officially appears to the world
https://ton.twitter.com/i/ton/data/dm/580926467309117440/580926467351060480/OE0jqbBX.jpg:small
Listen my madhab is of Ibn Kathir and Ibn tamiya. My madhab by them is traced back to Rasul Allah(saw)
Iraq and sham are Khawarij strongholds.They will keep on appearing till last of them appears with dajjal. Many times Khawarij have appeared from there and they will keep on .
ISI fitan came from iraq and spread in sham with takfir and killings of other Mujahideen .Thats why this quote suits khwarij of Iraq and shaam at all times of their appearance. I quote this quote as it also suits present young foolish generation of IS as well as others of past.
Ibn Kathir said, “If the Kharijites ever gained power, they would corrupt the entire land, Iraq and Syria. They would not leave a boy or a girl or a man or a woman, for in their view the people have become so corrupt that they cannot be reformed except by mass killing.”
Source: Al-Bidayah wa Nihayah 10/584
قال ابن كثير إِذْ لَوْ قَوُوا هَؤُلَاءِ لَأَفْسَدُوا الْأَرْضَ كُلَّهَا عِرَاقًا وَشَامًا وَلَمْ يَتْرُكُوا طِفْلًا وَلَا طِفْلَةَ وَلَا رَجُلًا وَلَا امْرَأَةً لِأَنَّ النَّاسَ عِنْدَهُمْ قَدْ فَسَدُوا فَسَادًا لَا يُصْلِحُهُمْ إِلَّا الْقَتْلُ جُمْلَةً
10/584 البداية والنهاية ثم دخلت سنة سبع وثلاثين ذكر خروج الخوارج من الكوفة ومبارزتهم عليا رضي الله عنه بالعداوة والمخالفة
So many Fitnas related to one place and that is IRAQ.. so Noble Prophet صلی اللہ علیہ وسلم mentioning its IRAQ as a core place of Fitna has been proved at the later stages.
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Salaam
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Blurb
In his first live broadcast since his release from prison, journalist Bilal Abdul Kareem answers your questions!
More bad news
Like to share
Blurb
In his first live broadcast since his release from prison, journalist Bilal Abdul Kareem answers your questions!
More bad news
Last edited:
Salaam
Final update - a look at Irans involvement in the Syria civil war.
Iran’s new brigade infiltrates tribes in east Syria
Iran is working on controlling and infiltrating the Syrian community by supporting local leaders affiliated with it, forming tribal councils and appointing new sheikhs from small clans and families to spread
Shiism in its areas of control in east Syria.
Since the beginning of 2021, Iran has begun working on forming the Hashemiyoon military brigade in Syria, allowing only Shiites to join it. The newly formed faction, which began operating in mid-August, has joined the other pro-Iranian factions in Syria, including Zainabiyoun Brigades, Fatemiyoun Brigade and al-Husseinoun Brigade.
The Hashemiyoon Brigade has engaged in military operations in Syria, with offices and sites spreading through the cities of al-Bukamal, al-Mayadin, Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa in eastern Syria. New offices were also opened in Aleppo and the countryside of Damascus.
The brigade is directly affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and is led by Youssef al-Hamdan, known as Abu Issa al-Mashhadani, and Musa al-Mahdmoud — both of whom are close to Tehran.
In August, the brigade was ordered to convince tribal sheikhs, mukhtars, clerics and other influential dignitaries and figures in east Syria to join the so-called Euphrates Valley Tribes and Clans Council affiliated with Iran, with the aim of spreading Shiism in the area.
Those who agree to join the council would be granted a document certifying that they are from the descendants of the Hashemites (descendants of the Prophet Muhammad) and the Husseini House (in reference to Hussein Ibn Ali, the son of Ali, cousin of the Prophet Muhammad, and Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad). They would also receive political, military and media support, and funds to open new headquarters for the recruitment and training of middle and high school students, in addition to organizing school trips to Iranian universities in the city of Qom.
A sheikh of the Bakara tribe in Deir ez-Zor told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, “All the members of the Hashemiyoon Brigade are tribesmen from the area, especially from Deir ez-Zor. The brigade is estimated to have around 200 members so far.”
The brigade has confiscated many houses in al-Bukamal and other towns and villages in the Euphrates area, turning them into sites for new recruits, according to the sheikh.
Al-Rahba Citadel in the city of al-Mayadin was also turned into a weapons depot to protect arms from airstrikes, he said, noting that the citadel also serves as a military site for the Iranian leaders of the brigade.
The Hashemiyoon Brigade’s main mission is to recruit tribesmen and forcibly convert the population into Shiism, by bribing influential tribal leaders, the source said.
“Tehran is well aware of the tribes’ influence in this part of Syria, as they are the original inhabitants with the largest population density — something that could help spread Shiism across the Syrian communities. Also, Iran [resorted to tribes] since it could no longer cover all battlefronts given the ongoing losses and the desertion of dozens of fighters,” he noted.
He said, “Meetings are ongoing between tribal dignitaries in the area and Iranian leaders to recruit tribesmen into the ranks of the new brigade and cover battlefronts against Islamic State cells, Syrian Democratic Forces [SDF] and the armed opposition factions.”
The source added, “But these efforts to recruit tribesmen will not succeed as we [the Bakara tribe] will wait for the right opportunity to eliminate tribal leaders who are loyal to Iran and who lost influence among tribesmen. Iran has been seeking to use these chiefs to serve its own interests, after having sidelined the opponent tribal leaders."
He continued, “Iran is making sure that the newly formed brigade is made up of tribesmen, since tribes are spread in Iraq and Syria, which would help Tehran control and spread its influence faster in the [Euphrates] area.”
Mudar Hammad al-Assaad, spokesman for the Syrian Tribes and Clans Council, told Al-Monitor, “Iran has been using the Arab tribes to recruit their youths to fight alongside Iranian forces and to gain their allegiance by offering them military and economic support among other benefits. Iran has also appointed many as sheikhs in a bid to undercut the role of tribes, many of whom have joined the political opposition.”
He said, “Tehran is trying to spread the message that the tribes’ fighters fighting with the armed opposition forces do not represent the clans. Many tribes support the Syrian regime and Iran, which deepens the gap between the members of the same clan."
Assaad noted, “Amid the deteriorating economic and security situation, the area’s youth seek to join Iranian-affiliated militias in a bid to escape arrests from the Syrian regime and get some money. The Hashemiyoon Brigade’s leaders also offer some incentives — such as the authority to conduct legal matters and transactions in government departments — to lure in the youth, which is Iran’s tactic in recruiting people in the area.”
He added, “Over the past few weeks, a group of tribal sheikhs have intensified their calls for recruitment. Iran is seeking to have tribesmen join its ranks because hiring foreign fighters is much more expensive."
According to Al-Khabour network covering news in the eastern Euphrates, Iran has failed to control the east of the Euphrates militarily and is now working on controlling it through the support of local leaders loyal to Tehran, and the formation of tribal councils as well as the appointment of new sheikhs from smaller tribes and families belonging to Ahl al-Bayt (referring to the extended family of the Prophet Muhammad), in a bid to spread Shiism in the area.
Private sources cited by Al-Khabour said that Iran announced its support for the Bani Saba clan to hold a conference Oct. 13 in the SDF-controlled Qamishli area in order to split from the Tay tribe, one of the largest tribes in Syria that has no affiliation to any party.
The same sources reported that Iran had granted funds for the Bani Saba dignitaries to be distributed to the families of the Tay tribe in Qamishli, in a bid to gain their loyalty and allegiance.
Anas Shawakh, researcher at the Jusoor Center for Studies, told Al-Monitor, “The Hashemiyoon Brigade aims to sow discord within Arab tribes and to associate them with Iran, Ahl al-Bayt and the Hashemites. The brigade managed to create cracks in the Tay tribe, after the Bani Saba clan announced it was splitting from it to become independent.”
He said, “These defected tribes and clans will need to join military factions, which is why the brigade was formed, to embrace them all. With this move, Russia would no longer be able to expel Iran from the area, because Tehran has managed to deeply infiltrate within the area’s social fabric, achieving its desired goal."
https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2021/10/irans-new-brigade-infiltrates-tribes-east-syria
Comment.
Final update - a look at Irans involvement in the Syria civil war.
Iran’s new brigade infiltrates tribes in east Syria
Iran is working on controlling and infiltrating the Syrian community by supporting local leaders affiliated with it, forming tribal councils and appointing new sheikhs from small clans and families to spread
Shiism in its areas of control in east Syria.
Since the beginning of 2021, Iran has begun working on forming the Hashemiyoon military brigade in Syria, allowing only Shiites to join it. The newly formed faction, which began operating in mid-August, has joined the other pro-Iranian factions in Syria, including Zainabiyoun Brigades, Fatemiyoun Brigade and al-Husseinoun Brigade.
The Hashemiyoon Brigade has engaged in military operations in Syria, with offices and sites spreading through the cities of al-Bukamal, al-Mayadin, Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa in eastern Syria. New offices were also opened in Aleppo and the countryside of Damascus.
The brigade is directly affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and is led by Youssef al-Hamdan, known as Abu Issa al-Mashhadani, and Musa al-Mahdmoud — both of whom are close to Tehran.
In August, the brigade was ordered to convince tribal sheikhs, mukhtars, clerics and other influential dignitaries and figures in east Syria to join the so-called Euphrates Valley Tribes and Clans Council affiliated with Iran, with the aim of spreading Shiism in the area.
Those who agree to join the council would be granted a document certifying that they are from the descendants of the Hashemites (descendants of the Prophet Muhammad) and the Husseini House (in reference to Hussein Ibn Ali, the son of Ali, cousin of the Prophet Muhammad, and Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad). They would also receive political, military and media support, and funds to open new headquarters for the recruitment and training of middle and high school students, in addition to organizing school trips to Iranian universities in the city of Qom.
A sheikh of the Bakara tribe in Deir ez-Zor told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, “All the members of the Hashemiyoon Brigade are tribesmen from the area, especially from Deir ez-Zor. The brigade is estimated to have around 200 members so far.”
The brigade has confiscated many houses in al-Bukamal and other towns and villages in the Euphrates area, turning them into sites for new recruits, according to the sheikh.
Al-Rahba Citadel in the city of al-Mayadin was also turned into a weapons depot to protect arms from airstrikes, he said, noting that the citadel also serves as a military site for the Iranian leaders of the brigade.
The Hashemiyoon Brigade’s main mission is to recruit tribesmen and forcibly convert the population into Shiism, by bribing influential tribal leaders, the source said.
“Tehran is well aware of the tribes’ influence in this part of Syria, as they are the original inhabitants with the largest population density — something that could help spread Shiism across the Syrian communities. Also, Iran [resorted to tribes] since it could no longer cover all battlefronts given the ongoing losses and the desertion of dozens of fighters,” he noted.
He said, “Meetings are ongoing between tribal dignitaries in the area and Iranian leaders to recruit tribesmen into the ranks of the new brigade and cover battlefronts against Islamic State cells, Syrian Democratic Forces [SDF] and the armed opposition factions.”
The source added, “But these efforts to recruit tribesmen will not succeed as we [the Bakara tribe] will wait for the right opportunity to eliminate tribal leaders who are loyal to Iran and who lost influence among tribesmen. Iran has been seeking to use these chiefs to serve its own interests, after having sidelined the opponent tribal leaders."
He continued, “Iran is making sure that the newly formed brigade is made up of tribesmen, since tribes are spread in Iraq and Syria, which would help Tehran control and spread its influence faster in the [Euphrates] area.”
Mudar Hammad al-Assaad, spokesman for the Syrian Tribes and Clans Council, told Al-Monitor, “Iran has been using the Arab tribes to recruit their youths to fight alongside Iranian forces and to gain their allegiance by offering them military and economic support among other benefits. Iran has also appointed many as sheikhs in a bid to undercut the role of tribes, many of whom have joined the political opposition.”
He said, “Tehran is trying to spread the message that the tribes’ fighters fighting with the armed opposition forces do not represent the clans. Many tribes support the Syrian regime and Iran, which deepens the gap between the members of the same clan."
Assaad noted, “Amid the deteriorating economic and security situation, the area’s youth seek to join Iranian-affiliated militias in a bid to escape arrests from the Syrian regime and get some money. The Hashemiyoon Brigade’s leaders also offer some incentives — such as the authority to conduct legal matters and transactions in government departments — to lure in the youth, which is Iran’s tactic in recruiting people in the area.”
He added, “Over the past few weeks, a group of tribal sheikhs have intensified their calls for recruitment. Iran is seeking to have tribesmen join its ranks because hiring foreign fighters is much more expensive."
According to Al-Khabour network covering news in the eastern Euphrates, Iran has failed to control the east of the Euphrates militarily and is now working on controlling it through the support of local leaders loyal to Tehran, and the formation of tribal councils as well as the appointment of new sheikhs from smaller tribes and families belonging to Ahl al-Bayt (referring to the extended family of the Prophet Muhammad), in a bid to spread Shiism in the area.
Private sources cited by Al-Khabour said that Iran announced its support for the Bani Saba clan to hold a conference Oct. 13 in the SDF-controlled Qamishli area in order to split from the Tay tribe, one of the largest tribes in Syria that has no affiliation to any party.
The same sources reported that Iran had granted funds for the Bani Saba dignitaries to be distributed to the families of the Tay tribe in Qamishli, in a bid to gain their loyalty and allegiance.
Anas Shawakh, researcher at the Jusoor Center for Studies, told Al-Monitor, “The Hashemiyoon Brigade aims to sow discord within Arab tribes and to associate them with Iran, Ahl al-Bayt and the Hashemites. The brigade managed to create cracks in the Tay tribe, after the Bani Saba clan announced it was splitting from it to become independent.”
He said, “These defected tribes and clans will need to join military factions, which is why the brigade was formed, to embrace them all. With this move, Russia would no longer be able to expel Iran from the area, because Tehran has managed to deeply infiltrate within the area’s social fabric, achieving its desired goal."
https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2021/10/irans-new-brigade-infiltrates-tribes-east-syria
Comment.
Salaam
A long overdue update.
Blurb
Syria based aid worker Tauqir Shaif discusses how a Canadian intelligence asset smuggled then 15 year old Shamima Begum into ISIS territory when she was a minor.
Blurb
Canada spy smuggled British schoolgirls to IS*S. I caught up with her lawyer Tasnime Akunjee over what this means for her and us.
And more generally.
Blurb
Time to bring your questions about current affairs! We will be answering your questions now insha Allah and taking your comments!
A long overdue update.
Blurb
Syria based aid worker Tauqir Shaif discusses how a Canadian intelligence asset smuggled then 15 year old Shamima Begum into ISIS territory when she was a minor.
Blurb
Canada spy smuggled British schoolgirls to IS*S. I caught up with her lawyer Tasnime Akunjee over what this means for her and us.
And more generally.
Blurb
Time to bring your questions about current affairs! We will be answering your questions now insha Allah and taking your comments!
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Salaam
Another summary of whats happened. Crucial to understand this uprising was undermined very early on.
Another summary of whats happened. Crucial to understand this uprising was undermined very early on.
Salaam
Another update. HTS made an incursion into Northern Syria. Tox gives some background info.
Hes right, who could of imagined this a couple of years back.
Another update. HTS made an incursion into Northern Syria. Tox gives some background info.
Hes right, who could of imagined this a couple of years back.
Salaam
The revolution is being betrayed, slowly but surely.
Turkish and Syrian defence and security officials meet for first time in a decade
Move towards peaceful relations represents cause for alarm for more than 4m refugees in Turkey since 2011
Top Turkish and Syrian defence and security officials have held their first public meeting in more than a decade, in a dramatic shift towards normalising relations between the two countries after Ankara backed rebels during Syria’s civil war.
The Turkish defence minister, Hulusi Akar, and the head of the country’s national intelligence organisation (MIT), Hakan Fidan, met the Syrian defence minister, Ali Mahmoud Abbas, and the notorious spy chief Ali Mamlouk in Moscow, in a meeting attended by the Russian defence minister, Sergei Shoigu.
The Turkish defence ministry outlined how the group discussed “the Syrian crisis, the refugee problem”, and coordination regarding efforts to “combat all terrorist organisations in Syria”. The meeting, it added, “was held in a constructive atmosphere”, ensuring that the same officials would meet again in future.
The Moscow meeting represents a marked shift in Turkish policy as Ankara has supported and trained some Syrian rebel groups. Turkish territory along its southern border with Syria provided vital lifelines for rebels during the early stages of the Syrian civil war, and formed an essential exit point for millions of civilians who fled violence.
The move towards peaceful relations between Ankara and Damascus represents cause for alarm for the more than 4 million Syrian refugees who have sought shelter in Turkey since 2011. Turkey has recently accelerated efforts to increase what the state calls “voluntary returns”, including official claims that 100,000 people have been repatriated this year to countries including Syria, part of an anti-immigration push ahead of an election expected in June next year or before.
Human Rights Watch, however, documented how Turkish authorities arrested hundreds in their homes, workplaces or on the street, before detaining them and forcing them to sign voluntary return forms and then forcing them to cross back into Syria at gunpoint.
In 2017, the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, told a press conference that “[Bashar al-Assad] is definitely a terrorist who has carried out state terrorism”, pointing to the thousands of civilians killed as well as 5.6 million refugees who have fled. Yet last September, Erdoğan suddenly signalled the beginnings of a change in policy when he declared that “diplomacy can never be cut off” with Damascus.
Two months later, he added that he was willing to hold a meeting with the Syrian leader. “A meeting with Assad can take place. There is no resentment in politics. Sooner or later, we can take steps,” he said.
Erdoğan’s comments about the need for diplomacy were echoed by foreign minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, who sparked protests among opponents of Assad in northern Syria after stating earlier this year that peaceful reconciliation between rebels and the Assad government was now a necessity.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...urity-officials-meet-for-first-time-in-decade
More analysis.
And before everybody forgets what the Assad regime is capable of.
The revolution is being betrayed, slowly but surely.
Turkish and Syrian defence and security officials meet for first time in a decade
Move towards peaceful relations represents cause for alarm for more than 4m refugees in Turkey since 2011
Top Turkish and Syrian defence and security officials have held their first public meeting in more than a decade, in a dramatic shift towards normalising relations between the two countries after Ankara backed rebels during Syria’s civil war.
The Turkish defence minister, Hulusi Akar, and the head of the country’s national intelligence organisation (MIT), Hakan Fidan, met the Syrian defence minister, Ali Mahmoud Abbas, and the notorious spy chief Ali Mamlouk in Moscow, in a meeting attended by the Russian defence minister, Sergei Shoigu.
The Turkish defence ministry outlined how the group discussed “the Syrian crisis, the refugee problem”, and coordination regarding efforts to “combat all terrorist organisations in Syria”. The meeting, it added, “was held in a constructive atmosphere”, ensuring that the same officials would meet again in future.
The Moscow meeting represents a marked shift in Turkish policy as Ankara has supported and trained some Syrian rebel groups. Turkish territory along its southern border with Syria provided vital lifelines for rebels during the early stages of the Syrian civil war, and formed an essential exit point for millions of civilians who fled violence.
The move towards peaceful relations between Ankara and Damascus represents cause for alarm for the more than 4 million Syrian refugees who have sought shelter in Turkey since 2011. Turkey has recently accelerated efforts to increase what the state calls “voluntary returns”, including official claims that 100,000 people have been repatriated this year to countries including Syria, part of an anti-immigration push ahead of an election expected in June next year or before.
Human Rights Watch, however, documented how Turkish authorities arrested hundreds in their homes, workplaces or on the street, before detaining them and forcing them to sign voluntary return forms and then forcing them to cross back into Syria at gunpoint.
In 2017, the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, told a press conference that “[Bashar al-Assad] is definitely a terrorist who has carried out state terrorism”, pointing to the thousands of civilians killed as well as 5.6 million refugees who have fled. Yet last September, Erdoğan suddenly signalled the beginnings of a change in policy when he declared that “diplomacy can never be cut off” with Damascus.
Two months later, he added that he was willing to hold a meeting with the Syrian leader. “A meeting with Assad can take place. There is no resentment in politics. Sooner or later, we can take steps,” he said.
Erdoğan’s comments about the need for diplomacy were echoed by foreign minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, who sparked protests among opponents of Assad in northern Syria after stating earlier this year that peaceful reconciliation between rebels and the Assad government was now a necessity.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...urity-officials-meet-for-first-time-in-decade
More analysis.
And before everybody forgets what the Assad regime is capable of.
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Salaam
Another update. Long article but well worth a read.
The cataclysmic earthquakes that have struck Syria and Turkey this month have ignited debate about effective aid measures and, by extension, the politics of the Syrian conflict. The Syrian government has taken no small pleasure in an opportunity to ease its official diplomatic freeze in much of the world, blaming Western sanctions for the difficulty in aid and in turn bringing into question the politics of the conflict. Unfortunately, to claim that sanctions are in themselves to blame for aid difficulty ignores the fact that the vast majority of the devastation has hit areas outside government control and under the control of the Syrian opposition, which were already subjected to a crippling, Gaza-style siege by the very same government.
It is a further mistake, not in theoretical but in purely factual terms, to compare Syria with other Muslim countries — such as Afghanistan, Iran, or formerly Iraq — that are under sanctions, because in everything but name the Syrian government has been the major beneficiary of the status quo.
In an article published last week, the author, Faizan Malik, attempts to critique sanctions from the viewpoint that non-Muslim countries have no right to sanction Syria, therefore Muslims should not support such sanctions. It is one thing to critique sanctions — which I agree are generally both politically useless and destructive — and another to base such a critique on the flawed premises that he proceeds to cite.
Effectively the Syrian war is over, argues Malik, and as such Muslims should draw together against Western, colonial-style intrusions such as sanctions. We are even reminded of the refusal by Ali and Muawiyah, may Allah be pleased with them, to draw in non-Muslim powers into their dispute. This analysis misses several major points, which I will examine in the remainder of this article.
A Muslim regime?
Firstly, the regime of Bashar Assad is not a Muslim government. This is not a takfiri denunciation of anybody who has ever worked for or with it — as have much of the opposition themselves before defecting in the early 2010s — but rather a statement of fact. Officially, the regime pointedly notes its secularism and unofficially it is dominated by a certain selection of Alawite elites that almost monopolize policy.
This was the case since the 1960s, when an already narrow “neo-Baath” military elite — so-called because it differed from the original Baathists, who were largely purged — monopolized power after years of back-and-forth military coups, and especially so since the 1970s, when Hafez Assad monopolized power within that elite.
In particular, the elder Assad relied heavily on the intelligence service of the airforce from which he hailed, which acquired a special notoriety for its cruelty, but also other repressive instruments and tactics such as hiring paramilitary “shabiha” thugs, often controlled by family members of an intensely corrupt ruling class. Syria, a historically decentralized, multiconfessional but decidedly Islamic land, became under the neo-Baath a secularist yet sectarian police state, with not only Muslims but other groups, such as the Druze, subjected to recurrent bouts of suspicion and scrutiny.
The Syrian regime’s relationship with Islam has similarly been complicated. The Assads belong to a specific section of the Alawite group that, until Hafez Assad himself, made no claims to Islam, even as a minority sect. Assad’s father, for instance, was a vassal of the French mandate who begged them to either stay in Syria or break away as an Alawite ministate, a la “Christian” Lebanon, specifically in order to keep the Muslim majority at bay: this hostility to Muslims among the regime’s inner circle has been a recurring theme that explains much of its subsequent actions.
But, in order to control a largely Muslim land that was constitutionally bound to have a Muslim ruler, Hafez declared that Alawites were in fact Muslims, making occasional references to Islam even as he closely monitored its practice. Muslims were indeed invited to serve the regime, and many took up the offer: much of the largely Sunni merchant class, which had been an early hotbed for opposition, was eventually co-opted, while some Syrian scholars such as Ramadan Bouti took their perceived opportunity to draw the Assads closer to Islam.
On-off support to select, though severely controlled, Palestinian groups helped as well, and indeed whenever confronted with opposition the regime would routinely insist that it was being targeted for its solidarity with Palestine — a solidarity that was, as its relationship with successive Palestinian groups shows, entirely meant on its own terms.
Many more Muslims were excluded than included in the government’s favor, instead subjected to routine surveillance that reached totalitarian lengths. Stories abound of informants within families, of the notorious dungeons where guards would routinely taunt their prisoners with insults of Islam; even in such a supposedly national institute as the military, Sunnis were routinely pressured into betraying Islamic rules and making blasphemous statements.
Syria was not the only police state in the Muslim world, but it was the only one ruled by a largely non-Muslim elite that considered Muslim identity as an implicit threat. Consequently, under any pressure the regime would lash out, directing its campaigns almost exclusively against Muslims. Take for example neighboring Lebanon, where Hafez Assad’s traditional suspicion toward the Palestinian Fatah movement overcame his suspicion toward their Israel-backed rightwing Maronite rivals. Having long chided such populists for upsetting Lebanon’s balance, when Assad actually entered Lebanon in 1976 his campaign was aimed exclusively, and quite brutally, against the Palestinians, in turn impressing not only the traditional Maronite aristocracy he sought to defend but even the United States whom he supposedly resisted. He was, in the words of the American ambassador, treated as the “latest incarnation of the crusaders.” Unfortunately, this impression extended at home as well and contributed in no small part to the Islamist revolt in Syria that was savagely extinguished, with acts of horrific slaughter, in the early 1980s.
Assad’s strategic utility as a check — against his Iraqi rivals, against the Palestinian groups, and against his own Muslim subjects — was not opposed, but instead largely appreciated and thus accommodated, by foreign powers. France admired in him an Arab Bismarck; he was supported by both the Soviet Union and Iran; and even the United States tolerated him for this utility, only objecting when his proxies in Lebanon collided with those of Israel.
This relationship warmed in the 1990s, after Assad helped Washington fight his longstanding rival Saddam Hussein. But Assad also spied an opportunity in Fatah’s embrace of the Oslo Accord to increase his prestige at home and away, instead supporting their rivals — though again on his, and not their, terms, since he had long disliked Fatah. This did seem to impress many Muslims; even the activist scholar Yusuf Qaradawi would claim after Assad’s death that his son Bashar was effectively acting as a Sunni Muslim — a statement he would soon come to regret and recant.
Although an ever-ruthless cynic, the elder Assad can at least be said to have been his own man — if not the man of the Muslims he ruled. The same is patently untrue of his son Bashar, who first relinquished the Syrian colony in Lebanon and then his own rule at home, both by overreach. Like Iran, Syria under the second Assad’s rule initially joined the American war on terror, for which its dungeons were primely suited, but balked when Washington approached its border by conquering Iraq. To be sure, there was tension between Damascus and Washington in the 2000s; Assad permitted the passage of insurgents into Iraq, and Washington played a role in Syria’s withdrawal from Lebanon.
But these were turf disputes rather than a genuine hostility, and Washington’s alarm toward “Islamists” — a catch-all term under which Assad could easily categorize any Muslim critic — drowned out any distaste it might have for the dictator.
Western Opposition to Assad?
The second point that must be addressed is that of the supposed Western opposition to Bashar Assad. This statement might have briefly been true ten years ago; it is unequivocally false today, except in the most cosmetic of terms. Even after the Arab uprisings broke out in 2010 and 2011, the United States remained initially ambivalent, with much of its establishment continuing to portray Assad as a “reformer.”
The corresponding regime crackdown, coinciding with an actual revolt-turned-regime change in Libya, briefly led the United States to consider the removal of Assad. Certainly, Qatar and Turkey, which had been instrumental in the overthrow of Muammar Qaddhafi, along with Saudi Arabia were enthusiastic about Assad’s overthrow, and Libyan weapons and fighters did make their way to Syria — often through the channels of Muslim governments like Ankara and Doha — not the United States. France, certainly no friend of Muslims, upped the ante by hosting a “government-in-exile,” which, however, was and remains irrelevant.
And in time, the American stance morphed into one of constant denunciation, usually by its ambassador Robert Ford. Over the course of 2012, American officials such as Ford and John McCain did publicly meet, and attempt to co-opt, Syrian opposition.
But such stances were shaky for a Washington still largely in “war on terror” mode, on whose skewed terms, uncomfortable with most public manifestations of Islam, the Syrian revolution was suspiciously religious. In particular, the Nusra Front, then an affiliate of Qaida and since reconstituted sans Qaida link as Tahrirul-Sham, attracted dismay.
This suspicion only deepened after autumn 2012, when the Libyan adventure seemed to have spiraled out of control, and the war-on-terror reflex kicked in. The Nusra Front’s designation as a terrorist group at the end of 2012, which was largely protested even by other groups and activists, was the first sign of a rapid shift in Washington’s policy. Even Western sympathizers of the rebels would attempt, in classic “war on terror” terms, to shoehorn groups between “secular” and “Islamic,” “moderate” and “radical,” and so on — disregarding the fact that most groups, even the relatively radical Nusra, drew from the same pool of relentlessly targeted, largely middle-class or rural, Sunni Muslims.
When and where the United States and France had considered regime change in Syria over 2012, it had been a purely cosmetic venture that sought to replace Assad with another, preferably Sunni, autocrat: the Talas clan, which had been the most powerful Sunni family in Assad’s Syria but propitiously defected, were favored clients-in-waiting. This was obviously at odds with the overwhelming majority of the revolt, which wanted to oust not only Bashar Assad but the cabal at whose helm he stood. So too was the paramount concern that the status quo on the Golan Heights, which the opposition often accused the Assads of having effectively abandoned, remained: thus no later than 2013, the United States withdrew support to the insurgency.
Subsequent support over the mid-2010s was explicitly conditioned on usage not against Assad, but against the Daesh group that had waded into the fray from Iraq. When and where American support did translate into insurgency against the government, a scandalized Washington hastily withdrew.
From this point on, the United States and other Western countries effectively adopted the policy advocated by Israeli diplomats in 2013: to let the regime and insurgency bleed each other, the only Israeli concern with the former being its support by Iran.
Washington’s first airstrikes in Syria were not against Assad, but against his opponents in the Idlib region who were accused of containing Qaida elements. American support went not to the Syrian revolt, but to Kurdish ethnonationalists in northeast Syria who were cobbled into a disingenuously named “democratic” coalition; moreover, this American-backed group targeted not the Syrian regime but the Turkish state that was the Syrian insurgency’s key lifeline.
In spite of this dizzying mixture — American-backed ethnonationalists, Daesh, Iranian paramilitaries, and regime thugs — the insurgency was again on the march, having taken much of the north and south, by 2015. It was at this point that Russia waded into the fray carrying out a remorselessly brutal campaign that flattened and conquered Aleppo and proceeded, by 2018, to clear out central and southern Syria. Corresponding Turkish campaigns, in 2016 and 2019, were similarly aimed not at ousting the regime but instead fending off Kurdish ethnonationalists.
Far more than Turkish support to the opposition, it has been foreign support that protected and propped up Bashar Assad. To speak then of Muslim sovereignty while discussing a non-Muslim vassal protected by a non-Muslim state is entirely absurd. Even the rebel enclave in the northwest, for its many faults, lays more claim to “Muslim sovereignty” than does the regime in Damascus.
Anarchy versus tyranny?
Could it be argued that the Syrian regime prior to 2011 should have been tolerated, as Malik indicates, on the maxim that a long tyranny maintaining order is preferable to even brief anarchy? Certainly, the argument had been made and tested on several occasions: the Syrian majority suffered the Assads for the majority of their decades in power, the revolt of the early 1980s being the only major exception.
As mentioned previously, scholars such as Bouti interacted with the regime hoping to influence its policy; Muslim groups such as the Qubaisiat pursued private Islamic revivalism; and even Ikhwan-originated groups such as Hamas entertained on-off collaboration with the government before 2011.
Be that as it may, such engagement did not influence the regime sufficiently to resort to form — when faced with even relatively minor dissent in 2011, its totalitarian machinery clicked into action and embarked on a series of massacres that were often colored, as had been the case in the 1980s, by explicitly anti-Sunni hatred.
The regime’s “shabiha” thugs — steroid-bloated criminals who enjoyed state sponsorship in spreading mayhem and massacre among communities — can hardly be said to represent “order” in any sense, let alone an Islamically acceptable sense. In short, the maxim that Malik quotes had been tried — and, ultimately, it did not apply to Syria under the Assads.
Unfortunately, the idea has spread among “traditional” circles that the Syrian revolt was triggered by the foolhardy impatience of unprepared revolutionaries who have since suffered the consequences of their actions. Such claims are often accompanied by disclaimers, as in Malik’s article, that nothing excuses the level of savagery that the regime has practiced, but they nonetheless place primary blame as a trigger on the opposition.
To assess this claim it is also crucial to note the sequence of events in 2011. The government’s armed crackdown in cities such as Daraa and Homs began in the spring; the first political opposition began in the summer; and the first notable armed insurgency began in the autumn. Cases such as Ghaith Matar and Hamza Khatib, murdered under torture not even for opposing the government but merely on the whims of regime thugs, were common throughout.
To put this into perspective, the entire Libyan war came and went before the Syrian opposition militarized. Clearly, it was the regime, that supposed rockwell of stability, that triggered the bloodbath — and has since dominated it, with the vast majority of civilians killed in the war having fallen prey to government-backed massacres.
This is not to deny that sections of the opposition made mistakes. It was always a long shot to expect an international “No-Fly Zone,” particularly given that the United States itself had long engaged in similar bouts of “terrorist”-aimed bombardment for years.
Though Nato had intervened in Libya, the situation there was almost the direct opposite of Syria: no state was willing to stick its neck out for the volatile Qaddhafi, while in Syria Assad was widely seen at the very least as a predictable alternative to “Islamists.” But such claims were made, more often than not, in desperation against crushing bombardment. To analogize, Palestine activists often appeal to international support and even the United Nations against Israel: though they know full well that these channels have long enabled Israel, there is little else they can do under the punishing circumstances — the same holds true for Syria’s opposition. Other mistakes include an early toleration of, and naivete toward, parasitic groups such as Nusra Front, who proceeded to attempt a hegemony under their own iron-fisted rule.
But these mistakes must be seen against the prevailing circumstances, which included routine massacres with an overtly sectarian flavor by the regime and its supporters. When it came to the crunch, the Syrian opposition was far more efficient in disposing of Daesh than the regime, which occasionally tolerated the latter as a tactical counterweight to the rebels.
Ultimately, it was not the revolt but the regime that plunged Syria into today’s anarchy. It is the regime, and not the revolt, that is protected by a non-Muslim occupying force — Russia. Insofar as any foreign power helps the revolt, whose appeal remains widespread even in such parts of government-controlled territory as Daraa, it is Turkey: a Muslim state of the type that Malik seems to mistake Assad’s Syria for. The Syrian opposition resembles, for all its flaws and fractures, a “sovereign Muslim” entity far more than the regime.
Sanctions and Aid
Insofar as any reminders of the brief Western flirtation with the revolt survives, they are in relatively sympathetic news coverage — the type that Afghanistan, Iraq, Kashmir, and Palestine admittedly do not enjoy because the West or its allies were at fault there — and in sanctions.
Certainly, sanctions have been a controversial and, in my opinion, generally deplorable measure. Recall the particularly notorious case of 1990s Iraq, where sanctions and the economic crisis that followed helped trigger deaths in the hundreds of thousands. Today, Taliban-recaptured Afghanistan is being strangled more from petulant spite than any genuine excuse, and Iran has officially been under sanctions by the United States since its 1979 revolution. As a general excuse, such sanctions hurt the population more than the regime.
Syria is a partial exception. I do not believe that sanctions against Damascus are necessary or even necessarily helpful, since the regime has its ways of bypassing them: notably the United Nations, which always maintains a bias for “recognized states” over their opponents. They also back such “autocracy is stability” Arab states as the United Arab Emirates, (tellingly the American “ace” in the Middle Eastern hole not least for its friendliness toward Israel) which has been a favored dropoff spot for Assad’s circles and the pioneering Arab state attempting to rehabilitate Assad.
But “sanctions are not helpful” is an entirely different argument than “sanctions cannot be pursued against Assad as a sovereign Muslim leader.” Assad — unlike the distasteful but authoritative Muslim rulers to whom Malik seems to be referring — is not a Muslim by any conventional definition of the word, nor is he, as a vassal of Russian occupation, in any sense sovereign. The salient comparison here is with Nouri Maliki of occupied Iraq, or Babrak Karmal and Ashraf Ghani in successive Afghan occupations: essentially a puppet, however sullen, in a Potemkin government-on-loan.
The other factor that is directly linked to the earthquake is the question of aid. The majority of aid has been transferred through government hands, in spite of a longstanding record of corrupt appropriation, but also despite the fact that the vast majority of the earthquake’s devastation occurred in opposition-held areas. Trusting Assad to rescue with aid the same area that he has relentlessly bombed to the ground over a decade requires almost willful naivete.
This has not stopped the regime from selling, and well-meant people from buying, the tale that it must be part of any meaningful aid. Such claims are not only disingenuous, but they also ignore the well-established networks of aid and support that have already been in place in the north for years — largely necessitated by the devastation caused by regime bombardment. The White Helmets organization, founded by Raed Saleh, is a case in point: they have long been vilified by the regime and its foreign supporters as terrorists in disguise, yet the very same regime tried to claim their humanitarian activity as its own after the earthquake struck.
A Lost Cause?
The final point that I must address is the claim that the Syrian war is essentially over, and Assad its winner. This is a tempting claim often pushed by both disingenuous and sincere individuals tired of the war’s devastation, even if the principal culprit stands to benefit. To be sure, the 2015-2018 Russian campaign shifted momentum sharply toward the regime.
But there remains a significant opposition stronghold in the north, and even regime/Russia-controlled areas such as the south bubble with unrest. Perhaps more importantly, sympathy for the revolt and its aims remain strong both within and outside Syria. Many of the opposition networks, particularly when it comes to humanitarian aid, still survive, and there is no reason to think they will cave to the will of their oppressor anytime soon.
In this sense the Syrian revolt can be best compared to the Palestinian case, another cause that suffered widespread devastation and displacement, is frequently dismissed by pessimists as being essentially over in favor of the oppressor, but has instead remained a glimmering flame for decades against the odds. And Malik is right: it must be hoped that Allah remains with such cases in spite of their ups and downs in fortunes, because indeed, Allah is with the steadfast.
https://traversingtradition.com/202...-islamic-legitimacy-and-order-versus-anarchy/
Another update. Long article but well worth a read.
Syria’s Conflict, Islamic Legitimacy, and ‘Order versus Anarchy’
In the Name of Allah the Most Gracious the Most Merciful,
In the Name of Allah the Most Gracious the Most Merciful,
The cataclysmic earthquakes that have struck Syria and Turkey this month have ignited debate about effective aid measures and, by extension, the politics of the Syrian conflict. The Syrian government has taken no small pleasure in an opportunity to ease its official diplomatic freeze in much of the world, blaming Western sanctions for the difficulty in aid and in turn bringing into question the politics of the conflict. Unfortunately, to claim that sanctions are in themselves to blame for aid difficulty ignores the fact that the vast majority of the devastation has hit areas outside government control and under the control of the Syrian opposition, which were already subjected to a crippling, Gaza-style siege by the very same government.
It is a further mistake, not in theoretical but in purely factual terms, to compare Syria with other Muslim countries — such as Afghanistan, Iran, or formerly Iraq — that are under sanctions, because in everything but name the Syrian government has been the major beneficiary of the status quo.
In an article published last week, the author, Faizan Malik, attempts to critique sanctions from the viewpoint that non-Muslim countries have no right to sanction Syria, therefore Muslims should not support such sanctions. It is one thing to critique sanctions — which I agree are generally both politically useless and destructive — and another to base such a critique on the flawed premises that he proceeds to cite.
Effectively the Syrian war is over, argues Malik, and as such Muslims should draw together against Western, colonial-style intrusions such as sanctions. We are even reminded of the refusal by Ali and Muawiyah, may Allah be pleased with them, to draw in non-Muslim powers into their dispute. This analysis misses several major points, which I will examine in the remainder of this article.
A Muslim regime?
Firstly, the regime of Bashar Assad is not a Muslim government. This is not a takfiri denunciation of anybody who has ever worked for or with it — as have much of the opposition themselves before defecting in the early 2010s — but rather a statement of fact. Officially, the regime pointedly notes its secularism and unofficially it is dominated by a certain selection of Alawite elites that almost monopolize policy.
This was the case since the 1960s, when an already narrow “neo-Baath” military elite — so-called because it differed from the original Baathists, who were largely purged — monopolized power after years of back-and-forth military coups, and especially so since the 1970s, when Hafez Assad monopolized power within that elite.
In particular, the elder Assad relied heavily on the intelligence service of the airforce from which he hailed, which acquired a special notoriety for its cruelty, but also other repressive instruments and tactics such as hiring paramilitary “shabiha” thugs, often controlled by family members of an intensely corrupt ruling class. Syria, a historically decentralized, multiconfessional but decidedly Islamic land, became under the neo-Baath a secularist yet sectarian police state, with not only Muslims but other groups, such as the Druze, subjected to recurrent bouts of suspicion and scrutiny.
The Syrian regime’s relationship with Islam has similarly been complicated. The Assads belong to a specific section of the Alawite group that, until Hafez Assad himself, made no claims to Islam, even as a minority sect. Assad’s father, for instance, was a vassal of the French mandate who begged them to either stay in Syria or break away as an Alawite ministate, a la “Christian” Lebanon, specifically in order to keep the Muslim majority at bay: this hostility to Muslims among the regime’s inner circle has been a recurring theme that explains much of its subsequent actions.
But, in order to control a largely Muslim land that was constitutionally bound to have a Muslim ruler, Hafez declared that Alawites were in fact Muslims, making occasional references to Islam even as he closely monitored its practice. Muslims were indeed invited to serve the regime, and many took up the offer: much of the largely Sunni merchant class, which had been an early hotbed for opposition, was eventually co-opted, while some Syrian scholars such as Ramadan Bouti took their perceived opportunity to draw the Assads closer to Islam.
On-off support to select, though severely controlled, Palestinian groups helped as well, and indeed whenever confronted with opposition the regime would routinely insist that it was being targeted for its solidarity with Palestine — a solidarity that was, as its relationship with successive Palestinian groups shows, entirely meant on its own terms.
Many more Muslims were excluded than included in the government’s favor, instead subjected to routine surveillance that reached totalitarian lengths. Stories abound of informants within families, of the notorious dungeons where guards would routinely taunt their prisoners with insults of Islam; even in such a supposedly national institute as the military, Sunnis were routinely pressured into betraying Islamic rules and making blasphemous statements.
Syria was not the only police state in the Muslim world, but it was the only one ruled by a largely non-Muslim elite that considered Muslim identity as an implicit threat. Consequently, under any pressure the regime would lash out, directing its campaigns almost exclusively against Muslims. Take for example neighboring Lebanon, where Hafez Assad’s traditional suspicion toward the Palestinian Fatah movement overcame his suspicion toward their Israel-backed rightwing Maronite rivals. Having long chided such populists for upsetting Lebanon’s balance, when Assad actually entered Lebanon in 1976 his campaign was aimed exclusively, and quite brutally, against the Palestinians, in turn impressing not only the traditional Maronite aristocracy he sought to defend but even the United States whom he supposedly resisted. He was, in the words of the American ambassador, treated as the “latest incarnation of the crusaders.” Unfortunately, this impression extended at home as well and contributed in no small part to the Islamist revolt in Syria that was savagely extinguished, with acts of horrific slaughter, in the early 1980s.
Assad’s strategic utility as a check — against his Iraqi rivals, against the Palestinian groups, and against his own Muslim subjects — was not opposed, but instead largely appreciated and thus accommodated, by foreign powers. France admired in him an Arab Bismarck; he was supported by both the Soviet Union and Iran; and even the United States tolerated him for this utility, only objecting when his proxies in Lebanon collided with those of Israel.
This relationship warmed in the 1990s, after Assad helped Washington fight his longstanding rival Saddam Hussein. But Assad also spied an opportunity in Fatah’s embrace of the Oslo Accord to increase his prestige at home and away, instead supporting their rivals — though again on his, and not their, terms, since he had long disliked Fatah. This did seem to impress many Muslims; even the activist scholar Yusuf Qaradawi would claim after Assad’s death that his son Bashar was effectively acting as a Sunni Muslim — a statement he would soon come to regret and recant.
Although an ever-ruthless cynic, the elder Assad can at least be said to have been his own man — if not the man of the Muslims he ruled. The same is patently untrue of his son Bashar, who first relinquished the Syrian colony in Lebanon and then his own rule at home, both by overreach. Like Iran, Syria under the second Assad’s rule initially joined the American war on terror, for which its dungeons were primely suited, but balked when Washington approached its border by conquering Iraq. To be sure, there was tension between Damascus and Washington in the 2000s; Assad permitted the passage of insurgents into Iraq, and Washington played a role in Syria’s withdrawal from Lebanon.
But these were turf disputes rather than a genuine hostility, and Washington’s alarm toward “Islamists” — a catch-all term under which Assad could easily categorize any Muslim critic — drowned out any distaste it might have for the dictator.
Western Opposition to Assad?
The second point that must be addressed is that of the supposed Western opposition to Bashar Assad. This statement might have briefly been true ten years ago; it is unequivocally false today, except in the most cosmetic of terms. Even after the Arab uprisings broke out in 2010 and 2011, the United States remained initially ambivalent, with much of its establishment continuing to portray Assad as a “reformer.”
The corresponding regime crackdown, coinciding with an actual revolt-turned-regime change in Libya, briefly led the United States to consider the removal of Assad. Certainly, Qatar and Turkey, which had been instrumental in the overthrow of Muammar Qaddhafi, along with Saudi Arabia were enthusiastic about Assad’s overthrow, and Libyan weapons and fighters did make their way to Syria — often through the channels of Muslim governments like Ankara and Doha — not the United States. France, certainly no friend of Muslims, upped the ante by hosting a “government-in-exile,” which, however, was and remains irrelevant.
And in time, the American stance morphed into one of constant denunciation, usually by its ambassador Robert Ford. Over the course of 2012, American officials such as Ford and John McCain did publicly meet, and attempt to co-opt, Syrian opposition.
But such stances were shaky for a Washington still largely in “war on terror” mode, on whose skewed terms, uncomfortable with most public manifestations of Islam, the Syrian revolution was suspiciously religious. In particular, the Nusra Front, then an affiliate of Qaida and since reconstituted sans Qaida link as Tahrirul-Sham, attracted dismay.
This suspicion only deepened after autumn 2012, when the Libyan adventure seemed to have spiraled out of control, and the war-on-terror reflex kicked in. The Nusra Front’s designation as a terrorist group at the end of 2012, which was largely protested even by other groups and activists, was the first sign of a rapid shift in Washington’s policy. Even Western sympathizers of the rebels would attempt, in classic “war on terror” terms, to shoehorn groups between “secular” and “Islamic,” “moderate” and “radical,” and so on — disregarding the fact that most groups, even the relatively radical Nusra, drew from the same pool of relentlessly targeted, largely middle-class or rural, Sunni Muslims.
When and where the United States and France had considered regime change in Syria over 2012, it had been a purely cosmetic venture that sought to replace Assad with another, preferably Sunni, autocrat: the Talas clan, which had been the most powerful Sunni family in Assad’s Syria but propitiously defected, were favored clients-in-waiting. This was obviously at odds with the overwhelming majority of the revolt, which wanted to oust not only Bashar Assad but the cabal at whose helm he stood. So too was the paramount concern that the status quo on the Golan Heights, which the opposition often accused the Assads of having effectively abandoned, remained: thus no later than 2013, the United States withdrew support to the insurgency.
Subsequent support over the mid-2010s was explicitly conditioned on usage not against Assad, but against the Daesh group that had waded into the fray from Iraq. When and where American support did translate into insurgency against the government, a scandalized Washington hastily withdrew.
From this point on, the United States and other Western countries effectively adopted the policy advocated by Israeli diplomats in 2013: to let the regime and insurgency bleed each other, the only Israeli concern with the former being its support by Iran.
Washington’s first airstrikes in Syria were not against Assad, but against his opponents in the Idlib region who were accused of containing Qaida elements. American support went not to the Syrian revolt, but to Kurdish ethnonationalists in northeast Syria who were cobbled into a disingenuously named “democratic” coalition; moreover, this American-backed group targeted not the Syrian regime but the Turkish state that was the Syrian insurgency’s key lifeline.
In spite of this dizzying mixture — American-backed ethnonationalists, Daesh, Iranian paramilitaries, and regime thugs — the insurgency was again on the march, having taken much of the north and south, by 2015. It was at this point that Russia waded into the fray carrying out a remorselessly brutal campaign that flattened and conquered Aleppo and proceeded, by 2018, to clear out central and southern Syria. Corresponding Turkish campaigns, in 2016 and 2019, were similarly aimed not at ousting the regime but instead fending off Kurdish ethnonationalists.
Far more than Turkish support to the opposition, it has been foreign support that protected and propped up Bashar Assad. To speak then of Muslim sovereignty while discussing a non-Muslim vassal protected by a non-Muslim state is entirely absurd. Even the rebel enclave in the northwest, for its many faults, lays more claim to “Muslim sovereignty” than does the regime in Damascus.
Anarchy versus tyranny?
Could it be argued that the Syrian regime prior to 2011 should have been tolerated, as Malik indicates, on the maxim that a long tyranny maintaining order is preferable to even brief anarchy? Certainly, the argument had been made and tested on several occasions: the Syrian majority suffered the Assads for the majority of their decades in power, the revolt of the early 1980s being the only major exception.
As mentioned previously, scholars such as Bouti interacted with the regime hoping to influence its policy; Muslim groups such as the Qubaisiat pursued private Islamic revivalism; and even Ikhwan-originated groups such as Hamas entertained on-off collaboration with the government before 2011.
Be that as it may, such engagement did not influence the regime sufficiently to resort to form — when faced with even relatively minor dissent in 2011, its totalitarian machinery clicked into action and embarked on a series of massacres that were often colored, as had been the case in the 1980s, by explicitly anti-Sunni hatred.
The regime’s “shabiha” thugs — steroid-bloated criminals who enjoyed state sponsorship in spreading mayhem and massacre among communities — can hardly be said to represent “order” in any sense, let alone an Islamically acceptable sense. In short, the maxim that Malik quotes had been tried — and, ultimately, it did not apply to Syria under the Assads.
Unfortunately, the idea has spread among “traditional” circles that the Syrian revolt was triggered by the foolhardy impatience of unprepared revolutionaries who have since suffered the consequences of their actions. Such claims are often accompanied by disclaimers, as in Malik’s article, that nothing excuses the level of savagery that the regime has practiced, but they nonetheless place primary blame as a trigger on the opposition.
To assess this claim it is also crucial to note the sequence of events in 2011. The government’s armed crackdown in cities such as Daraa and Homs began in the spring; the first political opposition began in the summer; and the first notable armed insurgency began in the autumn. Cases such as Ghaith Matar and Hamza Khatib, murdered under torture not even for opposing the government but merely on the whims of regime thugs, were common throughout.
To put this into perspective, the entire Libyan war came and went before the Syrian opposition militarized. Clearly, it was the regime, that supposed rockwell of stability, that triggered the bloodbath — and has since dominated it, with the vast majority of civilians killed in the war having fallen prey to government-backed massacres.
This is not to deny that sections of the opposition made mistakes. It was always a long shot to expect an international “No-Fly Zone,” particularly given that the United States itself had long engaged in similar bouts of “terrorist”-aimed bombardment for years.
Though Nato had intervened in Libya, the situation there was almost the direct opposite of Syria: no state was willing to stick its neck out for the volatile Qaddhafi, while in Syria Assad was widely seen at the very least as a predictable alternative to “Islamists.” But such claims were made, more often than not, in desperation against crushing bombardment. To analogize, Palestine activists often appeal to international support and even the United Nations against Israel: though they know full well that these channels have long enabled Israel, there is little else they can do under the punishing circumstances — the same holds true for Syria’s opposition. Other mistakes include an early toleration of, and naivete toward, parasitic groups such as Nusra Front, who proceeded to attempt a hegemony under their own iron-fisted rule.
But these mistakes must be seen against the prevailing circumstances, which included routine massacres with an overtly sectarian flavor by the regime and its supporters. When it came to the crunch, the Syrian opposition was far more efficient in disposing of Daesh than the regime, which occasionally tolerated the latter as a tactical counterweight to the rebels.
Ultimately, it was not the revolt but the regime that plunged Syria into today’s anarchy. It is the regime, and not the revolt, that is protected by a non-Muslim occupying force — Russia. Insofar as any foreign power helps the revolt, whose appeal remains widespread even in such parts of government-controlled territory as Daraa, it is Turkey: a Muslim state of the type that Malik seems to mistake Assad’s Syria for. The Syrian opposition resembles, for all its flaws and fractures, a “sovereign Muslim” entity far more than the regime.
Sanctions and Aid
Insofar as any reminders of the brief Western flirtation with the revolt survives, they are in relatively sympathetic news coverage — the type that Afghanistan, Iraq, Kashmir, and Palestine admittedly do not enjoy because the West or its allies were at fault there — and in sanctions.
Certainly, sanctions have been a controversial and, in my opinion, generally deplorable measure. Recall the particularly notorious case of 1990s Iraq, where sanctions and the economic crisis that followed helped trigger deaths in the hundreds of thousands. Today, Taliban-recaptured Afghanistan is being strangled more from petulant spite than any genuine excuse, and Iran has officially been under sanctions by the United States since its 1979 revolution. As a general excuse, such sanctions hurt the population more than the regime.
Syria is a partial exception. I do not believe that sanctions against Damascus are necessary or even necessarily helpful, since the regime has its ways of bypassing them: notably the United Nations, which always maintains a bias for “recognized states” over their opponents. They also back such “autocracy is stability” Arab states as the United Arab Emirates, (tellingly the American “ace” in the Middle Eastern hole not least for its friendliness toward Israel) which has been a favored dropoff spot for Assad’s circles and the pioneering Arab state attempting to rehabilitate Assad.
But “sanctions are not helpful” is an entirely different argument than “sanctions cannot be pursued against Assad as a sovereign Muslim leader.” Assad — unlike the distasteful but authoritative Muslim rulers to whom Malik seems to be referring — is not a Muslim by any conventional definition of the word, nor is he, as a vassal of Russian occupation, in any sense sovereign. The salient comparison here is with Nouri Maliki of occupied Iraq, or Babrak Karmal and Ashraf Ghani in successive Afghan occupations: essentially a puppet, however sullen, in a Potemkin government-on-loan.
The other factor that is directly linked to the earthquake is the question of aid. The majority of aid has been transferred through government hands, in spite of a longstanding record of corrupt appropriation, but also despite the fact that the vast majority of the earthquake’s devastation occurred in opposition-held areas. Trusting Assad to rescue with aid the same area that he has relentlessly bombed to the ground over a decade requires almost willful naivete.
This has not stopped the regime from selling, and well-meant people from buying, the tale that it must be part of any meaningful aid. Such claims are not only disingenuous, but they also ignore the well-established networks of aid and support that have already been in place in the north for years — largely necessitated by the devastation caused by regime bombardment. The White Helmets organization, founded by Raed Saleh, is a case in point: they have long been vilified by the regime and its foreign supporters as terrorists in disguise, yet the very same regime tried to claim their humanitarian activity as its own after the earthquake struck.
A Lost Cause?
The final point that I must address is the claim that the Syrian war is essentially over, and Assad its winner. This is a tempting claim often pushed by both disingenuous and sincere individuals tired of the war’s devastation, even if the principal culprit stands to benefit. To be sure, the 2015-2018 Russian campaign shifted momentum sharply toward the regime.
But there remains a significant opposition stronghold in the north, and even regime/Russia-controlled areas such as the south bubble with unrest. Perhaps more importantly, sympathy for the revolt and its aims remain strong both within and outside Syria. Many of the opposition networks, particularly when it comes to humanitarian aid, still survive, and there is no reason to think they will cave to the will of their oppressor anytime soon.
In this sense the Syrian revolt can be best compared to the Palestinian case, another cause that suffered widespread devastation and displacement, is frequently dismissed by pessimists as being essentially over in favor of the oppressor, but has instead remained a glimmering flame for decades against the odds. And Malik is right: it must be hoped that Allah remains with such cases in spite of their ups and downs in fortunes, because indeed, Allah is with the steadfast.
https://traversingtradition.com/202...-islamic-legitimacy-and-order-versus-anarchy/
Salaam
Another update. Situation looking more and more grim for the opposition.
Blurb
Over the past 50 years, Syria has emerged as a pariah state on the world stage. As well as having been designated a state sponsor of terrorism, it has been under a brutal dictatorship. On top of this, its violent crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations in 2011 saw it widely condemned and suspended from the Arab League. However, things now seem to be changing. After a dozen years, many Arab states - including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates - are re-engaging with the country. And there have been calls for its suspension to be lifted. So, is Syria regaining international acceptance? And, if so, why?
And its happened.
More comment.
Hard reality and 'Realpolitik' involved.
More analysis.
Having said that.
Never forget.
Lessons to be learned as always.
Which way Turks votes in upcoming presidential elections will have massive impact on whats left of the opposition.
While this is all happening - infighting.
Another update. Situation looking more and more grim for the opposition.
Blurb
Over the past 50 years, Syria has emerged as a pariah state on the world stage. As well as having been designated a state sponsor of terrorism, it has been under a brutal dictatorship. On top of this, its violent crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations in 2011 saw it widely condemned and suspended from the Arab League. However, things now seem to be changing. After a dozen years, many Arab states - including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates - are re-engaging with the country. And there have been calls for its suspension to be lifted. So, is Syria regaining international acceptance? And, if so, why?
And its happened.
More comment.
Hard reality and 'Realpolitik' involved.
More analysis.
Having said that.
Never forget.
Lessons to be learned as always.
Which way Turks votes in upcoming presidential elections will have massive impact on whats left of the opposition.
While this is all happening - infighting.
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Salaam
UAE from the onset worked relentlessly to undermine the Syrian revolt against Assad regime, but shocking how low they will go.
UAE from the onset worked relentlessly to undermine the Syrian revolt against Assad regime, but shocking how low they will go.
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Salaam
Another update.
And the masks continue to come off.
Another update.
And the masks continue to come off.
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Abz2000
Abz Iz Back!!!
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Ash-Shu'ara' 26:60-68(60) فَأَتْبَعُوهُم مُّشْرِقِينَ (61) فَلَمَّا تَرَٰٓءَا ٱلْجَمْعَانِ قَالَ أَصْحَٰبُ مُوسَىٰٓ إِنَّا لَمُدْرَكُونَ (62) قَالَ كَلَّآۖ إِنَّ مَعِىَ رَبِّى سَيَهْدِينِ (63) فَأَوْحَيْنَآ إِلَىٰ مُوسَىٰٓ أَنِ ٱضْرِب بِّعَصَاكَ ٱلْبَحْرَۖ فَٱنفَلَقَ فَكَانَ كُلُّ فِرْقٍ كَٱلطَّوْدِ ٱلْعَظِيمِ (64) وَأَزْلَفْنَا ثَمَّ ٱلْءَاخَرِينَ (65) وَأَنجَيْنَا مُوسَىٰ وَمَن مَّعَهُۥٓ أَجْمَعِينَ (66) ثُمَّ أَغْرَقْنَا ٱلْءَاخَرِينَ (67) إِنَّ فِى ذَٰلِكَ لَءَايَةًۖ وَمَا كَانَ أَكْثَرُهُم مُّؤْمِنِينَ (68) وَإِنَّ رَبَّكَ لَهُوَ ٱلْعَزِيزُ ٱلرَّحِيمُ (60) So they pursued them at sunrise.(61) And when the two bodies saw each other, the people of Moses said: "We are sure to be overtaken."(62) (Moses) said: "By no means! my Lord is with me! Soon will He guide me!"(63) Then We told Moses by inspiration: "Strike the sea with thy rod." So it divided, and each separate part became like the huge, firm mass of a mountain. (64) And We made the other party approach thither.(65) We delivered Moses and all who were with him;(66) But We drowned the others.(67) Verily in this is a Sign: but most of them do not believe.(68) And verily thy Lord is He, the Exalted in Might, Most Merciful.English - Yusuf AliGet Quran App: https://gtaf.org/apps/quran#GreentechApps
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