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SYRIA COMMENT
Posted by Chris Solomon on Tuesday, March 9th, 2021. Until the outbreak of the Syrian revolts in March 2011, Syria had the largest Christian population in the Middle East after Egypt. According to different sources, two to three million Christians (making up 10-15% of the population) lived in the country forming a rich mosaic in termsof their
S YRIAÕS L ON G C IVIL W AR 331 T he Þrst year and a half in the curr ent round of SyriaÕ s long civil war took as many lives as the thr ee-week or gy of violence in the city of Hama that ended the last round in 1982. MAJLIS IDARA THAATIYA This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 30th, 2017 at 4:48 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response.JOSHUA LANDIS
Joshua Landis
THE NAMES OF THE SYRIAN REVOLUTION This entry was posted on Saturday, December 14th, 2013 at 7:36 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your ownsite.
CONVOY OF MARTYRS IN THE LEVANT http://www.jihadology.net ©2013 Aaron Y. Zelin / Flashpoint Global Partners http://www.flashpoint‐intel.com 1 Convoy of Martyrs in theLevant
MASS GRAVES OF YAZIDIS KILLED BY THE ISLAMIC STATE 3 Introduction About Yazda Yazda, registered as a 501(c)(3) organization in the U.S. and as a local NGO in the Kurdistan Region of Northern Iraq, was established August 2014 by 2010 06 ANALYST PRESENTATION WEBPOSTING ENTIRE SHOW 98 Israel Operations Low cost with improving margin fSafe, Reliable Operations Over one million man hours without an OSHA recordable Over 99.9% reliability since inception in 2004 fOutstanding Field Performance Adding 50 - 100 Bcf gross to recoverable reserves fLow-cost Structure LOE $0.22/Mcf DD&A $0.50/Mcf fPrice Realizations Above $4/Mcf Net Production HIJAB - SYRIA COMMENT This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 27th, 2012 at 2:59 am and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a SCREEN-SHOT-2016-10-03-AT-12-38-47-PM This entry was posted on Monday, October 3rd, 2016 at 1:45 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through theRSS 2.0 feed.
SYRIA COMMENT
Posted by Chris Solomon on Tuesday, March 9th, 2021. Until the outbreak of the Syrian revolts in March 2011, Syria had the largest Christian population in the Middle East after Egypt. According to different sources, two to three million Christians (making up 10-15% of the population) lived in the country forming a rich mosaic in termsof their
S YRIAÕS L ON G C IVIL W AR 331 T he Þrst year and a half in the curr ent round of SyriaÕ s long civil war took as many lives as the thr ee-week or gy of violence in the city of Hama that ended the last round in 1982. MAJLIS IDARA THAATIYA This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 30th, 2017 at 4:48 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response.JOSHUA LANDIS
Joshua Landis
THE NAMES OF THE SYRIAN REVOLUTION This entry was posted on Saturday, December 14th, 2013 at 7:36 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your ownsite.
CONVOY OF MARTYRS IN THE LEVANT http://www.jihadology.net ©2013 Aaron Y. Zelin / Flashpoint Global Partners http://www.flashpoint‐intel.com 1 Convoy of Martyrs in theLevant
MASS GRAVES OF YAZIDIS KILLED BY THE ISLAMIC STATE 3 Introduction About Yazda Yazda, registered as a 501(c)(3) organization in the U.S. and as a local NGO in the Kurdistan Region of Northern Iraq, was established August 2014 by 2010 06 ANALYST PRESENTATION WEBPOSTING ENTIRE SHOW 98 Israel Operations Low cost with improving margin fSafe, Reliable Operations Over one million man hours without an OSHA recordable Over 99.9% reliability since inception in 2004 fOutstanding Field Performance Adding 50 - 100 Bcf gross to recoverable reserves fLow-cost Structure LOE $0.22/Mcf DD&A $0.50/Mcf fPrice Realizations Above $4/Mcf Net Production HIJAB - SYRIA COMMENT This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 27th, 2012 at 2:59 am and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a SCREEN-SHOT-2016-10-03-AT-12-38-47-PM This entry was posted on Monday, October 3rd, 2016 at 1:45 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through theRSS 2.0 feed.
NASSER AND QUWATLI 1958 President Quwatli gives Nasser a tour of Salahidin’s tomb during his first visit to Damascus in 1958, when he came to sign the Syrian-Egyptian Union. The tomb of Saladin is located behind the Grand Umayyad Mosque in Old Damascus. Photo thanks to Sami Moubayed. This entry was posted on Thursday, May 26th, 2016 at 12:55 pm and is filedunder .
MAJLIS IDARA THAATIYA This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 30th, 2017 at 4:48 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. ROJAVA TEXTBOOK APRIL 2017 PIC WITH MAP OF GREATER This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 31st, 2018 at 5:05 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response.LEVANT ETHNICITY
This entry was posted on Saturday, August 31st, 2013 at 8:12 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a SYRIA-MAP-SYRIAS-CHEMICAL-WEAPONS This entry was posted on Thursday, August 29th, 2013 at 3:28 am and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a ASSYRIAN DAWRONOYE AND BETH NAHRAIN REVOLUTIONARY COUNCIL This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 31st, 2018 at 4:47 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. HIJAB - SYRIA COMMENT This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 27th, 2012 at 2:59 am and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a U.S. GOVERNMENT ASSESSMENT OF THE SYRIAN GOVERNMENT’S USE Syrian President Bashar al-Asad is the ultimate decision maker for the chemical weapons program and members of the program are carefully vetted to ensure security and loyalty.TRUE OR FALSE
This entry was posted on Thursday, May 12th, 2011 at 3:15 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a WWW.JOSHUALANDIS.COM www.joshualandis.comSYRIA COMMENT
Posted by Chris Solomon on Tuesday, March 9th, 2021. Until the outbreak of the Syrian revolts in March 2011, Syria had the largest Christian population in the Middle East after Egypt. According to different sources, two to three million Christians (making up 10-15% of the population) lived in the country forming a rich mosaic in termsof their
ERASING ASSYRIANS
ERASING ASSRIANS 3 The Nineveh Plain is the only region in Iraq where the largest segment of the inhabitants are Assyrians. The area is considered the original Assyrian heartland. THE DISCOURSES OF THE DAMASCENE SUNNI ULAMA DURING THE Damascene ‘Ulama and the 2011 Uprising 63 freedoms, as well as the corruption that results fr om such repressive laws. Bouti maintained that reform was a social and religious obligation, CONVOY OF MARTYRS IN THE LEVANT http://www.jihadology.net ©2013 Aaron Y. Zelin / Flashpoint Global Partners http://www.flashpoint‐intel.com 1 Convoy of Martyrs in theLevant
MASS GRAVES OF YAZIDIS KILLED BY THE ISLAMIC STATE 3 Introduction About Yazda Yazda, registered as a 501(c)(3) organization in the U.S. and as a local NGO in the Kurdistan Region of Northern Iraq, was established August 2014 by S YRIAÕS L ON G C IVIL W AR 331 T he Þrst year and a half in the curr ent round of SyriaÕ s long civil war took as many lives as the thr ee-week or gy of violence in the city of Hama that ended the last round in 1982. U.S. GOVERNMENT ASSESSMENT OF THE SYRIAN GOVERNMENT’S USE 1 . U.S. Government Assessment of the Syrian Government’s . Use of Chemical Weapons on August 21, 2013 . The United States Government assesses with high confidence that the Syrian government carried 2010 06 ANALYST PRESENTATION WEBPOSTING ENTIRE SHOW 98 Israel Operations Low cost with improving margin fSafe, Reliable Operations Over one million man hours without an OSHA recordable Over 99.9% reliability since inception in 2004 fOutstanding Field Performance Adding 50 - 100 Bcf gross to recoverable reserves fLow-cost Structure LOE $0.22/Mcf DD&A $0.50/Mcf fPrice Realizations Above $4/Mcf Net ProductionSAADALIZAMAM
This entry was posted on Saturday, May 28th, 2016 at 8:42 am and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. WWW.JOSHUALANDIS.COMTRANSLATE THIS PAGE O£V¿?_{ä3®y¸-sFÙ9GU‹Ï~½šœ)ÐÖr'_NoŸ>ƒmyUö9dóCÔÃÉŸ\•æGCÈ?°¤òƒÖ\¾5½QO! cÉŸ\ç ŸZ¶xüŸDcæ§ÝÞx,þøW€ ÂG »Øh³çëëü¼¹Éj ,>Å]«®Y É &³X¦Èg£sG2žá· §®O>žŠ© ƒ?SYRIA COMMENT
Posted by Chris Solomon on Tuesday, March 9th, 2021. Until the outbreak of the Syrian revolts in March 2011, Syria had the largest Christian population in the Middle East after Egypt. According to different sources, two to three million Christians (making up 10-15% of the population) lived in the country forming a rich mosaic in termsof their
ERASING ASSYRIANS
ERASING ASSRIANS 3 The Nineveh Plain is the only region in Iraq where the largest segment of the inhabitants are Assyrians. The area is considered the original Assyrian heartland. THE DISCOURSES OF THE DAMASCENE SUNNI ULAMA DURING THE Damascene ‘Ulama and the 2011 Uprising 63 freedoms, as well as the corruption that results fr om such repressive laws. Bouti maintained that reform was a social and religious obligation, CONVOY OF MARTYRS IN THE LEVANT http://www.jihadology.net ©2013 Aaron Y. Zelin / Flashpoint Global Partners http://www.flashpoint‐intel.com 1 Convoy of Martyrs in theLevant
MASS GRAVES OF YAZIDIS KILLED BY THE ISLAMIC STATE 3 Introduction About Yazda Yazda, registered as a 501(c)(3) organization in the U.S. and as a local NGO in the Kurdistan Region of Northern Iraq, was established August 2014 by S YRIAÕS L ON G C IVIL W AR 331 T he Þrst year and a half in the curr ent round of SyriaÕ s long civil war took as many lives as the thr ee-week or gy of violence in the city of Hama that ended the last round in 1982. U.S. GOVERNMENT ASSESSMENT OF THE SYRIAN GOVERNMENT’S USE 1 . U.S. Government Assessment of the Syrian Government’s . Use of Chemical Weapons on August 21, 2013 . The United States Government assesses with high confidence that the Syrian government carried 2010 06 ANALYST PRESENTATION WEBPOSTING ENTIRE SHOW 98 Israel Operations Low cost with improving margin fSafe, Reliable Operations Over one million man hours without an OSHA recordable Over 99.9% reliability since inception in 2004 fOutstanding Field Performance Adding 50 - 100 Bcf gross to recoverable reserves fLow-cost Structure LOE $0.22/Mcf DD&A $0.50/Mcf fPrice Realizations Above $4/Mcf Net ProductionSAADALIZAMAM
This entry was posted on Saturday, May 28th, 2016 at 8:42 am and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. WWW.JOSHUALANDIS.COMTRANSLATE THIS PAGE O£V¿?_{ä3®y¸-sFÙ9GU‹Ï~½šœ)ÐÖr'_NoŸ>ƒmyUö9dóCÔÃÉŸ\•æGCÈ?°¤òƒÖ\¾5½QO! cÉŸ\ç ŸZ¶xüŸDcæ§ÝÞx,þøW€ ÂG »Øh³çëëü¼¹Éj ,>Å]«®Y É &³X¦Èg£sG2žá· §®O>žŠ© ƒ? MAYSALUN-MEMORIAL-1930S This entry was posted on Thursday, July 23rd, 2020 at 8:41 am and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. SYRIANS-CHRISTIANS-CHURCH This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 9th, 2021 at 9:57 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. YOUSEF-AL-AZMA-PHOTO This entry was posted on Thursday, July 23rd, 2020 at 8:54 am and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response.TAYMOUR JUMBLATT
(FILES) This file photo taken on July 24, 2010 shows Taymur Jumblatt, son of Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, walking past a painting of his late grandfather Kamal Jumblatt during a farewell lunch for an Israeli-Arab Druze delegation at Jumblatt's residence in Mukhtara, southeast of Beirut. Walid Jumblatt, 67, passed on the torch to his son, Taymur, by placing a traditional keffiyeh scarf LIEUTENANT GENERAL NASSIF JASSEM AL SAMERAI This entry was posted on Sunday, January 18th, 2015 at 10:26 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave aKAMAL AND WALID
This entry was posted on Saturday, March 16th, 2019 at 10:04 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response.SAADALIZAMAM
This entry was posted on Saturday, May 28th, 2016 at 8:42 am and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. MAHERQAWARMAVISITEDBYRUSSIANS This entry was posted on Friday, July 13th, 2018 at 2:21 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. COMMENTS ON: DR. JOHN EIBNER AND NOUHAD SAMAAN Syrian politics, history, and religion Comments on: Dr. John Eibnerand Nouhad Samaan
ABU AL-WALEED AL-TUNISI, TUNISIAN FIGHTER FOR ISIS This entry was posted on Saturday, September 21st, 2013 at 7:16 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a*
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10 YEARS OF THE SYRIAN CRISIS AND THE FUTURE OF CHRISTIANS IN THE COUNTRY: AN INTERVIEW WITH DR. MARK TOMASS POSTED BY CHRIS SOLOMON ON TUESDAY, MARCH 9TH, 2021 By Abdulmesih BarAbraham Until the outbreak of the Syrian revolts in March 2011, Syria had the largest Christian population in the Middle East after Egypt. According to different sources, two to three million Christians (making up 10-15% of the population) lived in the country forming a rich mosaic in terms of their denominations, visible in a variety of Christian churches in Syria. During the conflict, they have not been acting as a homogeneous group and remained fragmented along many denominational lines. Geographically, they remain scattered in different cities of the country. According to Open Door assessment from 2013, their geographical concentration in strategic areas marked an important factor of their vulnerability. While Christians too participated initially in the peaceful protests that emerged in 2011 demanding reforms, the bulk of the Christian population distanced itself from the development very early on due to the rapid militarization, radicalization and Islamization of the insurgency. Not actively involved in the conflict, they have been casually blamed as supporters of the regime._ _Many observers see the Christians as the biggest losers in the Syrian conflict. Their numbers have been dwindling, more than half of them has left the country. Partially with diverging interests and priorities, US, Turkey, Russia, and Iran, as the key actors to the Syrian conflict, are not able to find a common solution for Syria while some observer see the ongoing disagreements and rivalries over the post-conflict reconstruction of the country indicative of new difficulties and disagreements. In his New Year message in early February to the audience of the Diplomatic Corps accredited to the Holy See, Pope Francis drew attention to Syria and called for the end of the conflict, pointing that 2021 marks its 10thanniversary.
“_How I wish that 2021 may be the year when the conflict in Syria, begun ten years ago, can finaly end_!” Pope Francis told 88 ambassadors from around the world. “_For this to happen, renewed interest is needed also on the part of the international community to address the causes of the conflict with honesty and courage and to seek solutions whereby all, regardless of ethnic and religious affiliation, can contribute as citizens to the future of the country_,” he added. The Pope also touched on the suffering caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic crisis which aggravated a number of humanitarian emergencies in some regions and countries, saying that his “_thoughts also turn to Yemen and beloved Syria, where, in addition to other serious emergencies, a large part of the population experiences food insecurity and children are suffering frommalnutrition.”_
I had the opportunity to speak to Dr. Mark Tomass, Harvard University’s Extension School instructor and former research fellow at the Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies to get his insights into the various aspects of the Syrian crisis. Of particular interest is his view on how US Policy will be forming after President Joe Biden took office in Washington. Dr. Tomass addressed in this context several issues, with some focus on the situation of the Christians in the country. Dr. Mark Tomass is an author of two books on Syria. He has a Ph.D. from Northeastern University and is sought-after commentator and analyst on Middle East issues. He is an economist specialized in financial markets and monetary and credit crises. By virtue of his Syrian birth and upbringing, he engaged in the research field of civil conflict in the Middle East to explain the Lebanese civil war and subsequently the Syrian conflict. In his book “_The Religious Roots of the Syrian Conflict: The Remaking of the Fertile Crescent_,” published in
2016 by Palgrave McMillan, Dr. Tomass outlines the role of religion in the history of Syria and the Middle East from early Roman times to the rise of ISIS, with particular relevance to understanding the genesis of the regional civil war sparked in 2011 as a result of the Arab Spring Uprisings while portraying Syria’s religious and sectarian communities, describes their origins and development over time, and identifies sources of intractable conflict among some groups.His second book
,
edited with Charles Webel in 2017 by Routledge, and titled “_Assessing the War on Terror: Western and Middle Eastern Perspectives_,” highlights the works of prominent scholars and policy-makers’ insights regarding the direction and efficacy of theWar on Terror.
INTERVIEW
_ABDULMESIH BARABRAHAM (AB): PROFESSOR, THANK YOU FOR ACCEPTING THIS INTERVIEW. LET ME START WITH THE MOST RAISED QUESTIONS THESE DAYS: WHAT ARE THE POLITICAL AND MILITARY OPTIONS THE NEW U.S. PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN MIGHT CONSIDER WITH RESPECT TO SYRIA? WILL HE FOLLOW THE POLICY OF PRESIDENT OBAMA AS HE WAS VICE-PRESIDENT UNDER HIM FOR TWO TERMS?_ DR. MARK TOMASS (MT): As of today, and since his inauguration, President Biden has not spoken about the Syrian conflict. However, we can conclude what his policy will look like from the appointment of Antony Blinken as Foreign Secretary, Brett McGurk to head the National Security Council and oversee U.S. policy in Syria and Iraq, and Victoria Nuland to be Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. The track records of the three are those of interventionists. Secretary Blinken’s announcement on March 3 that Biden’s foreign policy will not pursue regime changes with military means is welcomed, but we will wait and see how serious that announcement is. The U.S. army has several military bases in Syria without the consent of its government. As we speak, new military bases are being built to the west of the Euphrates, most likely to prepare for a confrontation with the Iranian backed militias. If that is not military intervention, then Blinken needs to define what he means by military interventions. Biden has already struck Iranian backed militias in Syria on February 25, killing 22 and injuring many in retaliation for a missile attack on a U.S. base that killed one contractor hundreds of miles away in Irbil, northern Iraq. Moreover, McGurk is strongly in favor of empowering the Kurdish militias in Syria as opposed to the Obama-Biden administration’s wrong bet on the Islamist rebels to topple the Syrian government. The Obama-Biden support to the Islamist rebels inadvertently led to the expansion of ISIS into eastern Syria and the expansion of al-Qaida in various parts of Syria, which in turn provoked Russian military intervention. The U.S. bet on the YPG, the Syrian offshoot of the PKK, as a secular alternative to the Islamists because it had no other alternative, given that its policy was still to topple the Syrian regime. However, the YPG cannot maintain its control of eastern Syria without indefinite U.S. military support and presence. I believe Biden’s policy will continue along the same lines. The aim of the policy is to continue blocking the Syrian government’s access to the oil fields and the grain corps, thereby continue the ongoing starvation policy in the hope of inciting a new wave of rebellion, this time from inside the Syrian regimes’ ranks. Yet, the U.S., following Trump’s instructions, did not obstruct the Turkish incursion into parts of northern Syria, and even encouraged Turkey’s incursion into the northwestern Idlib region to stem the Syrian and Russian military advances to retake Idlib from al-Qaida, its affiliates, and rival jihadi groups. It is still to be seen, what U.S. policy towards Turkey will be. We will see what sort of tools Biden’s team will resort to as they follow up on his presidential campaign promise to support the Turkish opposition to President Erdogan’s rule, but it is highly unlikely that the U.S. will engage with Turkey militarily. _AB: IN FACT, NORTHERN SYRIA PARTICULARLY BECAME A PLAYING FIELD FOR EXTERNAL POWERS: US, TURKEY, WITH ITS MERCENARIES, RUSSIA AND IRAN. THE PLAYERS HAVE PARTIALLY DIVERGING INTERESTS AND GOALS. IS NORTHERN SYRIA THE GORDIAN KNOT FOR THE SOLUTION OF THE DECADE LONG SYRIANCONFLICT?_
MT: Sadly, I do not see now any positive sign of a solution emerging in any part of Syrian landscape. Each part has its own problems, reflecting the divergent visions of its multi-ethnic, multi-religious, multi-sectarian inhabitants regarding what their country should look like. This is also true in the various nation-states of the Middle East, with one exception that only in Syria these divergent visions are currently engaged in an armed conflict with regional and international forces fueling opposing sides. The north can be divided into a western and eastern part, each with a different problem. The northwest, including eastern and northern Aleppo, the Idlib province, and northern Latakia, are dominated by domestic and international Jihadis of various group affiliations. All those groups, except Hurras al-Din, a splinter group from al-Julani’s al-Qaida, have an understanding with the Turkish military intelligence not to clash with the Turkish army in that region, but they nevertheless have not abided by the Russian-Turkish agreement to open the Aleppo-Latakia M4 highway. This situation has been at a standstill for the past three years with no prospect as to what is to be done with the tens of thousands of jihadi fighters. The rest of the northeast is occupied by the Turkish army and the Syrian fighters under their command. Their primary aim is to keep the U.S. sponsored Kurdish YPG away from the Turkish border and to prevent the formation of a separate Kurdish entity anywhere in the northeast. Russian forces are attempting to moderate between the three parties and persuade the YPG to relinquish control to Syrian government troops to avoid a situation like Afrin’s fate. In Afrin, the YPG’s refusal to allow the Syrian government to take over the city, prompted Russia to lift its protection of the city and for the Turkish backed militias to advance into it. The fleeing Kurds’ houses were subsequently inhabited by refugees from various parts. In short, until Turkey, the U.S., and Russia agree on how to settle their differences in the northwest and the northeast, the current stalemate will continue, and I do not see a sign that those parties are about to arrive at a formula on how to settle their conflicting interests. _AB: IN 2015 THE U.S. FOUNDED THE KURDISH-LED SYRIAN DEMOCRATIC FORCES (SDF) TO COMBAT ISIS ON THE GROUND. WHAT IS THE SDF’S ROLE AFTER THE TOTAL TERRITORIAL DEFEAT OF ISIS?_ MT: That is a great question. As you recall, President Trump wanted to withdraw from Syria immediately after he thought that ISIS was defeated and intimated that the U.S. mission is not to serve nationalist Kurdish aspirations, the fact which prompted Brett McGurk’s resignation at the time. Indeed, it is said that the acronym SDF was McGurk’s creation to bestow legitimacy to the dominant Kurdish YPG component of the U.S. sponsored militia. I would not be surprised that the adding of Syriac script on its flag was also at his request. While it is clear to me that the SDF cannot continue to rule the Mesopotamian part of Syria without direct U.S. backing, I suspect that the U.S. military presence cannot remain for long without a clash with the Syrian government’s allied militias. Flag of the Syrian Democratic Forces On March 3, the Syrian presidency’s informal mouthpiece on social media with the fictitious name Naram Serjoonn , accused the U.S. of killing of hundreds of sheep and their shepherds as part of its policy to starve people and called for taking their revenge on U.S. soldiers stationed in al-Tanf airport, the desert triangle between Syria, Jordan, and Iraq that is blocking the road from Iraq into Syria. In the past, Syrian military intelligence officers arrested and imprisoned Syrian troops who spontaneously plotted to attack U.S. military personnel. That may not continue for long, as a perceived policy of deliberate starvation to incite another popular rebellion continues. _AB: WITH U.S. SUPPORT, THE SDF WAS ABLE INTEGRATE ALSO SOME ARAB TRIBES INTO ITS STRUCTURE. ACCORDING TO AN 2019 __ANALYSIS BY THE CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT_ _ SDF HAS “BEEN LOATH TO RELINQUISH ANY SIGNIFICANT DECISION-MAKING POWER TO BOTH KURDISH COMMUNITIES AND THE TITULAR POLITICAL AND MILITARY LEADERSHIP OF THE ARAB PARTICIPANTS IN THE SELF-ADMINISTRATION AND SDF.” HOW WOULD YOU ASSESS THE RELATIONS BETWEEN KURDS AND ARABS IN VIEW OF KURDISH ASPIRATIONS TO CLAIM BIG PARTS OF COUNTRY INCLUDING MOST FERTILE LAND AND CONTROL ITS OIL RESOURCES?_ MT: This is another great question that only those intimately familiar with the Middle Eastern landscape will ask. The YPG faces problems with the local Kurdish and non-Kurdish Muslims. One is the Kurds, in general, are not perceived as devout Muslims. In fact, their conversion to Islam in the past millennium is not viewed by non-Kurds as genuine. They are often accused of not practicing the five pillars of Islam properly, especially the five daily prayers. While this may be true of members of the YPG, being a genuinely secular organization, this prejudicial attitude extends to all Kurds who are seen as always prioritizing their ethnic identity over their religious one and therefore cannot be trusted as fellow Muslims. The fact that prominent Syrian Kurds in the past were devout Muslims, such as Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi (Jerusalem’s liberator from the Crusaders) and Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah (the father of the Takfiri scholars) were Kurds and that approximately one third of Iraqi Kurds are Muslim fundamentalists does not seem to change that prejudicial attitude. The other problem between the two ethnic groups is that the Arabs of the eastern Euphrates have a tribal structure and therefore are hard to bring under one command. Their allegiance may change once rival opportunities emerge. They may turn on the YPG if the Syrian government promised them rewards, each separately. The third problem is between the shifting ideology of the PKK founder Abdullah Ocalan and the other Kurds who are not followers of the imprisoned PKK leader. For those three reasons, I do not see the current YPG dominance within the SDF can be sustained in the long run without continued U.S. support. _AB: DESPITE RESERVATIONS OF THE MAJORITY OF ASSYRIANS IN SYRIA, WHICH HAVE THEIR ROOTS IN THE GENOCIDE OF 1915, TO COOPERATE WITH THE KURDS, THE SYRIAC MILITARY COUNCIL AS A MILITARY WING OF THE SYRIAC UNION PARTY IN SYRIA, JOINED THE KURDISH-LED SELF-ADMINISTRATION AND SDF. IT IS NOT A SURPRISE THAT THIS COOPERATION IS HAILED AS DEMOCRATIC AND MULTI-ETHNIC BY THE PYD. THOUGH, LOOKING AT NEXT-DOOR ASSYRIAN EXPERIENCE IN NORTHERN IRAQ WITH THE KURDISH REGIONAL GOVERNMENT, ASSYRIANS BECAME MARGINALIZED UNDER THE KURDISH RULE. ACCORDING TO A__2018 REPORT_ _
BY THE ASSYRIAN POLICY INSTITUTE “ELECTORAL LAW LEFT THE VOTING PROCESS FOR THE SELECTION OF CHRISTIAN MPS OPEN TO ABUSE, ENABLING POWERFUL NON-CHRISTIAN PARTIES TO EXPLOIT THE QUOTA SYSTEM.” HOW CAN A SIMILAR SCENARIO BE AVOIDED IN NORTHERN SYRIA?_ MT: A similar scenario cannot be avoided in Syria. The fact of the matter is that the Kurds have been deprived of national and cultural rights for a long time and now they find themselves in power and are eager to exercise it. Accommodating their dwindling Christian Assyrian/Syriac neighbors is their last concern, as was seen in the YPG’s insistence on imposing a Kurdish curriculum in Assyrian schools. There is a special rivalry between those two groups, since the aspired greater Kurdistan is imagined on what Assyrians believe is their ancestral historical land. _AB: WITHIN THE SYRIAN OPPOSITION THERE SEEMS TO BE STILL DISAGREEMENT ON __KEY ISSUES_ _ RELATED TO A NEW CONSTITUTION. THESE ARE THE NAME OF THE COUNTRY (SYRIAN REPUBLIC VS. SYRIAN ARAB REPUBLIC), RELIGION OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE COUNTRY, SOURCE OF THE LEGISLATION, AND OFFICIAL LANGUAGES. THIS DOESN’T PROMISE GOOD PROSPECTS FOR CHRISTIANS. THEY WOULD BE POSTMARKED TO SECOND-CLASS CITIZENS FROM THE OUTSET. DOESN’T THEIR SURVIVAL DEPEND VERY MUCH ON A SECULAR (NON-RELIGIOUS) AND DEMOCRATIC CONSTITUTION THAT GUARANTIES EQUAL CITIZENSHIP?_ MT: Syrian Christians, as is the case in other Arab countries, are broken people. They accepted their second-class status a long time ago and were historically grateful just to be left to live in relative safety and be spared from public humiliation policies occasionally enforced by certain rulers. In fact, Syrian Christians have always had a second-class status, even before the Arab conquest of Syria. When the Romans ruled Syria before and after their adoption of Christianity, they dealt with Syrians as a conquered people, while the Christian East Romans, or Byzantines, actively persecuted them for their refusal to accept the Roman Chalcedonian doctrine. That is partly why Syrians did not resist the Arab conquest of their dwellings. I deal with this question in my book ‘The Religious Roots of the Syrian Conflict.’
On the question of equal constitutional rights, that matter has been debated often since Syria’s independence from France, but it always faced strong opposition from the Muslim Brotherhood organization and it still does. I doubt that they will accept equality now, even though they have been militarily defeated. At any rate, in the event a new constitution would state that all citizens are equal, it is not conceivable that if a Christian would run for president in a fair election, she or he would be elected. Yet, the Christians’ exclusion from that right is a matter of principle and is rooted in religious doctrine. I suspect that the current government will compromise on this point and keep the condition that the president must be a Muslim and that Muslim scriptures be one source, if not the primary sourcefor legislation.
The other question regarding the supremacy of Arab identity and its addition to the name of the republic is a regime-related demand because the Syrian leadership believes that Arabism serves to legitimize its rule in the eyes of the Sunni Muslims. First, the Arab identity ties itself to Islam because, according to tradition, the Prophet of Islam was an Arab and presumably Syria was Islamized by the Arabs. Second, it distances itself from the Iranian identity. Third, it satisfies its support base among the Alawite Muslims, the majority of whom are of Tanoukhi origin, a confederation of Arab tribes that migrated from southern Iraq prior and during the Arab conquest of Syria and Mesopotamia, who incidentally were Nestorian Christians before they were Islamized. The removal of the term Arab from the official name of the Syrian Republic is a Kurdish, Assyrian, and Syrian nationalist demand, all of whom put together make up less than 15% of official Syrians. That is why President Asad dismissed the notion that the Islamic tradition is influenced by Syriac literature and emphasized the relationship between Arabism and Islam in his most recent theological sermon to the body of Muslim religious scholars which he summoned to the Presidential Palace. Last, making Kurdish and Syriac/Assyrian an official language next to Arabic is also unlikely. The maximum these two ethnic groups can hope for is their freedom to teach their native languages in their private schools and possibly in public schools where they constitute a sizable majority. _AB: DUE TO THE U.S. CAESAR ACT AND THE SANCTIONS IMPOSED ON SYRIA THE HUMANITARIAN CRISIS IN SYRIA WORSENING, EXACERBATED BY THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC. LAST JULY, RUSSIA, CHINA VETOED AN U.N. SECURITY COUNCIL RESOLUTION TO DELIVER HUMANITARIAN AID TO SYRIA FROM TWO TURKEY LOCATIONS. WHAT WERE THE ISSUES HERE? WHAT WERE CHINA’S MOTIVATIONTO BLOCK THIS?_
MT: To begin with, the tens of billions of Gulf Arab funds that were spent on the weaponization of the uprising did not ask for the Security Council’s permission to do so and were freely and illegally delivered into Syria; if the intention to deliver humanitarian aid is genuine, why isn’t it also being delivered illegally into Syria? Why ask the Security Council or the Syrian government, for permission? It should be clear to all observers that none of the domestic, regional, or international forces care about the humanitarian aspect of the Syrian conflict. If that were the case, government forces would not have heavy handedly cracked down on the protesters in 2011 and the regional and international forces would not have weaponized the uprising. That said, the July 2020 resolution you asked about was intended to deliver aid not to Syria at large, but to the Idlib region, which is currently administered by the Syrian Abu Muhammad al-Julani faction of al-Qaida and other splinter jihadi groups. Because Russia and China are backing the Syrian government, their vetoes were consistent with their official policy not to strengthen any party on the ground that operates outside government-controlled regions and end up strengthening the non-state actors controlling those regions, incidentally among whom are also Uighur Chinese nationals, who have been fighting along al-Qaida since the war began. Both China and Russia are weary of foreign interference because they keep in mind that their countries can also become subject to foreign intervention. Therefore, they only approve of interventions that are requested by the Syrian government. That is why China has not objected to the Russian intervention in the Syrian conflict because it was requested by its government that is still the only internationally recognized one despite the brutal 10-year war and the West’s taking the other sides of the conflict. As we well know, China itself is having trouble with Uighur dissidents and separatists who either refuse conform to the social aspect of communist ideology or violently resist Han immigration in Xinjiang where the Uighurs are the majority. This should explain why China is inclined to consider the Syrian government’s brutal crackdown on the Syrian protesters and then the rebels and their supporting communities an internal matter. _AB: PROFESSOR, YOU ARE NATIVE OF SYRIA WITH ROOTS IN ALEPPO. ALEPPO HAS BEEN BEFORE THE SYRIAN CRISIS THE MOST VISIBLE MULTI-RELIGIOUS AND MULTI-ETHNIC COSMOPOLITAN CITY OF THE COUNTRY. IT WAS HOME FOR CHRISTIAN COMMUNITIES FROM ALL DENOMINATIONS, ORTHODOX, CATHOLIC, AND PROTESTANTS. HOW WOULD YOU ASSESS THE SITUATION OF THE CHRISTIANS IN THE CITY NOW? WILL CHRISTIANITY BE ABLE TO REVIVE AGAIN IN ALEPPO?_ Greek Orthodox church in Aleppo’s old quarter MT: As long as Aleppo does not fall under the control of al-Qaida or its daughter ISIS, it will always maintain a token presence of Christians of all denominations to maintain their magnificent liturgical traditions in their ancestral land. Unfortunately, the Syrian conflict has taken such a long time that forced the approximately 70% of Aleppo’s Christians to flee death and starvation. Most of those have permanently settled elsewhere and are not likely to return. The Christians of Aleppo, like many other Syrian cities, have lived in relative peace within their semi-segregated quarters and prospered under various Syrian regimes including the current one. My family, for one, was deported from Urfa in February 1924, two years after the formation of modern Turkey, along the rest of the Assyrians/Suryan and found refuge in Aleppo, where they built the Assyrian Quarter. My paternal grandfather came back from the U.S. in the early 1930s searching for survivors from the 1915 genocide, found his sister in a convent in Beirut and settled also in the Assyrian Quarter of Aleppo. He would not have stayed had he not felt safe. Today, the fate of the remaining 30% of Aleppo’s Christians or the other Christians elsewhere in Syria will be the same as their Muslim neighbors, living through perilous uncertainty and worsening starvation. We should not forget Iraq’s Christians, whose numbers declined by about 85% since the U.S. invasion in 2003. _AB: CHRISTIAN COMMUNITIES IN SYRIA ARE SCATTERED ACROSS THE COUNTRY, AS THEY LIVED MAINLY IN CITIES LIKE ALEPPO, HOMS AND DAMASCUS AND DID NOT OCCUPY A LARGE VISIBLE REGION. AN EXCEPTION WERE THE ASSYRIAN/SYRIAC COMMUNITIES IN THE NORTH-EAST (HASSAKE GOVERNATE), WHO FORMED TILL THE 1970 THE MAJORITY OF THE POPULATION THERE. AT THE TURN OF THE MILLENNIUM, THEY WERE STILL ONE THIRD OF THE POPULATION IN THAT REGION. THESE COMMUNITIES ARE INDIGENOUS TO THE COUNTRY AND TRACE THEIR EXISTENCE TO THE ERA PRIOR TO ISLAM. WHILE ASSYRIAN POLITICAL ORGANIZATIONS ARE ENGAGED WITH THE SYRIAN OPPOSITION OR COLLABORATING WITH THE KURDISH-LED SELF-ADMINISTRATION IN NORTHERN SYRIA, THE LEADERSHIP OF CHURCHES SOFTLY ARGUES FOR REFORMS. IN THE WEST THEY ARE FALSELY SEEN AS REGIME FRIENDLY. AT THE MUNICH SECURITY CONFERENCE IN 2019 THE SYRIAC ORTHODOX PATRIARCH MOR IGNATIUS APHREM II LAMENTED (__HTTP://WWW.AINA.ORG/NEWS/20190220203444.HTM__) HOW CASUALLY
CHRISTIANS “ARE BLAMED AS SUPPORTERS OF THE REGIME,” IGNORING THAT THEY ARE STRUGGLING TO SURVIVE IN A COUNTRY WHERE THEY LIVE FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS — EVEN PRIOR TO ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY EMERGING IN THE REGION. WOULD YOU AGREE THAT MAJORITY OF THE CHRISTIANS DO NOT BELIEVE THAT A CHANGE PUSHED BY A SYRIAN OPPOSITION THAT IS DOMINATED BY ISLAMIC GROUPS WOULD BE A BETTER ALTERNATIVE TO THE CURRENT BUTREFORMED REGIME?_
MT: I faced similar criticisms when in October 2012, I contributed a blog to Harvard’s website with the title “The Syrian Conflict Is Not About Democracy.” The article was taken down a year later because it was perceived as justifying the government crackdown on opposition forces. The same article was cloned by AINA and is archived on its site for one to assess its diagnosis of the Syrian conflict and its prediction of the rise of al-Qaida and its daughter ISIS. Prior and during the uprising, I gave numerous lectures open to the public to explain the complexity of the Syrian conflict, especially its inhabitants’ lack of understanding of constitutional freedoms and individual rights, without which no democracy could be established. It was an uphill battle to offer an alternative narrative to the dominant one that the Obama administration and the corporate media in the U.S. decided to peddle. I am confident that once the CIA’s intelligence reports are declassified thirty or fifty years from now, it will be apparent that the rebellion was antigovernment and not prodemocracy. It is not conceivable that the CIA with its billions in resource endowment could not figure out the Syrian demographic landscape and that chaos would emerge from the destruction of the Syrian state in a similar manner that took place in Iraq. The Syrian conflict is a result of an intra-Muslim civil war. After the dust settles, history will classify it as the third major civil war in Muslim history, or “fitnah” as Muslims will refer to it, and a byproduct of the Islamic Awakening. The Syrian Christians were bystanders and suffered the consequences like everyone else, although they were only targeted directly by al-Qaida and ISIS, including the Patriarch himself who narrowly escaped a suicide bombing that targeted him in 2016, and I should not forget my friend, the vanquished Aleppo’s metropolitan Yohanna, who was most probably beheaded in 2013 like many other “infidels” and “apostates” at that time. Most, if not all, Christians withdrew their support of the protesters and the rebellion after it quickly transformed into a sectarian war. They took the side of the government, not because they were happy with it, but because it was obvious to them that it was a better alternative to chaos. The Syrian protesters wanted to have state without corruption but ended up having corruption without a state. All of those who wielded power in various regions abused it and prayed on the weaker. That is a structural sociological phenomenon that could not have been eradicated through a rebellion. The dominant anti-democratic, anti-individual liberties, anti-individual rights cultural patterns reproduced themselves within all the alternative governing structures that emerged outside government-controlled regions, while they became worse than before in every single category within the government-controlled ones. People must first learn how to respect each other’s rights before they ask government officials to respect theirs. Lack of respect for your fellow citizen’s humanity cannot be overcome with a revolution from the bottom up and certainly not through violence. I do not intend by this to moralize to my fellow Syrians, but I am making this diagnosis out of years of direct observation and interaction. A culture that does not respect individual human rights, produces despots. The personal identity of that despot is a footnote; it is not the cause of despotism. _AB: THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR YOUR TIME AND ANSWERS._______
Selected Blogs and Books on the Middle East in Chronological Order: Interview: “Understanding the Syrian Conflict” (March 2012) http://unypressfullstories.blogspot.com/2012/03/understanding-syrian-conflict.html Blog: “The Syrian Conflict Is Not About Democracy” (October 2012) http://www.aina.org/news/20121022163331.htm (Originally published by Harvard, then taken down one year later for its controversial content) Blog: “Why the Western Diagnosis of the Syrian Conflict Is Wrong” (February 2015) http://www.aina.org/releases/20150216194247.htm Book: _THE RELIGIOUS ROOTS OF THE SYRIAN CONFLICT: THE REMAKING OF THE FERTILE CRESCENT_ (Palgrave Macmillan 2016) https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=m7btCwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&hl=en&pg=GBS.PP1 Edited Book: _ASSESSING THE WAR ON TERROR: WESTERN AND MIDDLE EASTERN PERSPECTIVES_ (Routledge 2017) https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781315469164 Blog: “The ISIS Caliphate Will Be Eradicated, But What Will Follow?”
(August 1, 2017)
“Current political confrontation between the US and Iran will not escalate into a military confrontation.” (December 4, 2018) https://www.ilna.ir/Section-politics-3/698979-current-political-confrontation-between-the-us-and-iran-will-not-escalate-into-military-confrontation-harvard-lecturerSHARE THIS:
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Categories: Uncategorized WILL IRAN SUPPORT THE PKK? TURKISH EXPANSION IN SYRIA, IRAQ AND AZERBAIJAN WILL NOT GO UNANSWERED. POSTED BY JOSHUA ON TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 23RD, 2021BY HEDWIG KUIJPERS
(Twitter: @Hedwigkuijpers2 – Email: hedwigkuijpersjournalist@gmail.com Where will Turkey strike next? An analysis of events in Sinjar, Ayn Issa and Iraqi Kurdistan Will Iran Support the PKK to gain leverage against Turkey? As springtime is near, Turkey is preparing for its next large-scale offensive against its archenemy; the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK). It already started with its incessant shelling of Ayn-Issa in North-Syria, threatened to invade Sinjar, and the execution of an operation centering around the Gare mountain in Duhok district, Iraqi Kurdistan. But where will the next large offensive take place? Will it be Sinjar, Ayn-Issa, or Iraqi Kurdistan? Will Turkey make new enemiesalong the way?
SINJAR
On January 22th, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan uttered his famous phrase: _“__We may come there overnight, all of a sudden,”_ threatening the Sinjar region. “Turkey is always ready to carry out joint operations against the PKK with Iraq but we cannot openly announce the date for such operations.” Turkish analysts argued that Ankara was intent on launching a military operation in Sinjar (Iraq), noting that the surprise visit of Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar to Iraq brought with it an offer to carry out a joint operation against the organization. Akar stated that Turkey is determined “to end terrorism” through cooperation with Baghdad and the KRG, and pointed out that the next phase in Turkish operations will witness important developments in this regard. I contended that Turkey was baiting Biden and the new US administration, hoping to test its reaction to Turkish operations in regions with a PKK presence in my article: ‘Turkey takes Biden for atest-ride’.
Sinjar, which is still digging up the mass graves of Yazidis slaughtered by ISIS, is not just any province. It is still reeling from genocide. Turkey’s threat to hit the PKK in Sinjar may not elicit a response from the United States, but it is likely to get areaction from Iran.
Turkish threats to Sinjar have provoked pro-Iranian Iraqi militias to increase their presence in the region. Hashd al-Shaabi or the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), have announced that they will increase their role in the area, claiming that both the Iraqi central government and the Kurdistan Region Government have failed to implement the Baghdad-Erbil Sinjar agreement. The pact initiated in October 2020 was meant to stabilize the region and end the ongoing turf war in Sinjar. Disputes over who controls Sinjar have led to collapsing government services and insecurity. Insecurity is the main reason that Sinjar’s population has not returned. Having established a strong foothold in Syria’s North-East, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and its proxy, the Kurdish-dominated People’s Protection Units (YPG), offered fleeing Yazidis humanitarian and military aid, leading to the formation of a Yazidi sister-militia, the Shingal Resistance Unit (YBS) in 2014. Other remaining Yazidis joined the Yazidi-Yazidkhan force, while a smaller amount joined the Peshmerga and the Popular Mobilization Forces (Hashdal-Shaabi).
The Sinjar agreement stated that only Iraqi federal forces should operate in Sinjar. All other armed groups, including the PKK and the PMF, should leave the area. It also gave the KRG a say in establishing a new local government, including appointing a new mayor and planning and running reconstruction efforts in Sinjar. The KRG was also supposed to have a say over the budget. This agreement was to have settled Baghdad-Erbil disputes over control of the region and to have led to the withdrawal of the militias currently active there. Turkish threats to enter the region began when the agreement was not quicklyimplemented.
The Kurdistan Region Government did not respond to Turkey’s threatened incursion, nor did the Iraqi government in Baghdad. The only forces to pick up Turkey’s gauntlet were pro-Iranian militias. They spoke out against the threat and began to move into the region. Harakat al-Nujaba threatened the Turkish Military with action if an incursion was to take place in Nineveh and Sinjar. It reminded Turkish forces of action taken against American forces. It concluded its statement by saying that unless the Iraqi government would take divisive action, there would be active resistance against Turkishoccupation.
Shortly after, another militia allegedly affiliated with Iran – Asaib al Khayf -published a video of the launch of a missile targeting the Turkish military base in Bashiqa, Iraq. Another militia attacked the airport of Erbil and killing one civilian contractor, and injured nine others, amongst them one US service member. Another statement believed to be linked to Iran’s IRGC, says (claims) that all resistance axis groups in Iraq have pledged to take action against Turkish forces in the case of an incursion in the Sinjar region. The statement reads there are 20.000 personnel deployedin Sinjar so far.
Pro-Iranian forces taking a harsh stance against a Turkish invasion – something both KRG and the Iraqi central government have failed to do – are believed to have averted the threat (for now). Turkey will not want to provoke Iran. Last night, another Iran-linked ‘Islamic Resistance’ telegram account stated: “We are following events in Sinjar. We are monitoring the operation rooms of the enemy and its agents. As they disturb Iraqis, we are going to disturb them soon.”AYN-ISSA
Turkey has been aiming to capture the M4, a highway connecting Aleppo with Qamishlo. It runs all the way to the Yaaroubia border crossing. About 140 kilometers of this road borders the areas its Syrian proxies occupy in North-Syria. The SDF-held town of Ayn Issa sits at the point the highway bends north. It is a thorn in Turkey’s eye. Shelling and small-scale proxy-attacks to capture the M4 have continued over the winter, forcing the Russians to increase their military checkpoints in the area. Yesterday, military sources in Ayn Issa confirmed that Russian troops stationed at the main Russian military base in the city, located in the southeast forming a buffer between Turkish-backed forces and the SDF, pulled back to Til Samen. Reportedly, the Russians left some troops in the three shared bases north of the city. On February 19th, Nuri Mahmoud, a spokesman for the People’s Protection Units (YPG), confirmed that the SDF, may be part of the new “Syrian army” after reaching a comprehensive political solution tothe Syria crisis.
The Russian withdrawal happening in the context of tensions between Russia and the SDF and the new Astana talks – a Turco-Ruso-Iranian-led initiative to end the Syrian conflict – and was obviously meant to pressure the SDF in striking a deal with Damascus to avoid an impending Turkish incursion. This manoeuvre led to panic among SDF-supporters foreseeing Turkish troops flooding the area as the Russians withdraw. It is yet to become clear how both Turkey and the SDF will react to Russian withdrawing from Ayn Issa, and to what extend the Russians really intend to withdraw. Are they merely (temporarily) stomping their feet at differences with the SDF leadership, is it a ploy to show it has lost its patience with SDF’s ‘waiting game’ to reapproach Damascus, or does it intend to let Turkey invade? Personally, I see this move as a political move, serving the second. I do not foresee a full-blown Turkish incursion of Ayn-Issa starting this week. Turkey is still pivoting to gain a clear reaction from both Russia and the NATO-allies. It has allegedly amassed tanks and troops at its border with Tal Abyad. Yet, I believe it will try to finally reach the M4 through intensified war-by-proxy, hence the – once again – increase in Turkish-backed militants’ shelling of the villages surrounding both Tal Abyad and Ayn Issa throughout the last48 hours.
IRAQI KURDISTAN
Events concerning Turkey’s ever-lasting war against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party never leave the stage. Its operations of 2020 have led to Turkey controlling swats of North-Iraq militarily, and an incredible amount of Turkish military bases in KDP-held areas of theKRG.
Lasting from February 10th to the 14th, Turkey started its most recent operation – dubbed Operation Eagle Claw 3 – surrounding the Gara Mountain, situated in the Duhok Governorate of the Kurdistan Region. It also bombed the nearby Zap region. The result was such that both the PKK and the Turkish Armed Forces claimed victory following the operation. The accounts of what evolved during this operation vary. In the aftermath, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed to expand military operations to other regions where threats are still significant. “Whichever hole they enter, we will find them there and we will bump them off,” he said during the provincial congress of his ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party in Trabzon, a city located on the Black Sea coast. Turkish interior minister Süleyman Soylu released a television statement explaining the strategic importance of Gare for Turkey. He stated Gare is the PKK’s corridor connecting Qandil and North-East Syria. He also explained – showing locations on the map – that Gare is extremely important as it hosts most PKK academies. His statements are true. PKK fighters use the Gare regions extensively for training, and use the local infrastructure to transport themselves between Qandil and the Syrian border. Gare also borders other areas that are used to launch forces into Turkey. Süleyman Soylu also threatened the PKK’s military commander Murat Karayilan, vowing not to rest until capturing him, and “cut him intothousand pieces”.
This was met with laughter by Karayilan, who released his own statement yesterday, saying: “Süleyman Soylu threatens us with street language. If we were afraid of death, we would not have carried out this struggle. Soylu should stop threatening from his halls and sending the children of the poor to death. I challenge him. If he has the courage let him come.” He also stated that the Turkish operation in Gare was an operation ‘meant to stay’. According to him, Erdogan intended to capture the Gare mountain and interrupt the PKK’s logistics, trainings, and movement of forces from East to West. In my opinion, Turkey will certainly continue its attacks on PKK targets in Iraqi Kurdistan, as previous offensives have not been met with resistance by Erbil, Baghdad, or the international community. The only place Turkey currently feels certain of attacking, lies here. It will try to further interrupt the PKK’s movement there, mainly targeting Gare and Zap, and by bombing Qandil throughout the summer. By doing so, it might attempt to push PKK leadership and camps further to the Iranian side of Qandil – where it cannot target them as easily as inside the KRG, in an attempt to hurt their ceasefire with Iran, and ‘making them Iran’s problem’. Looking at events in Syria – where Turkey and Iran have different goals -, Sinjar, and possibly future strive along Qandil’s border, a new question arises. Will the PKK become the cause of strive between the two neighbouring countries?SHARE THIS:
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Categories: Uncategorized WHY THE U.S. SHOULD PIVOT OUT OF THE MIDDLE EAST AND LIFT SANCTIONSON SYRIA
POSTED BY JOSHUA ON WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 17TH, 2021BY S. FARAH
The United States (U.S.) and China are engaged in a great power competition and the winner will set the standard for our future world. Since the end of the World Wars, the U.S. has laid the technological and security architectures, as well as norms and practices worldwide, including trade and investment. Today, China is fast eclipsing the U.S. in key areas, including 5G, civil engineering, infrastructure, quantum computing and cryptography, and artificial intelligence. Additionally, China’s economy is poised to overtake that of the U.S. as the biggest economy in dollar terms by 2027; however, based on purchasing power parity, the cost of goods and services, China’s economy is already about $4 trillion bigger than that of the U.S. For the U.S. to succeed, this competition requires an all-hands-on-deck approach, including a massive investment in research and development in new technologies and realignment of our military. The Middle East (M.E.), with the trillions of dollars being sunk there, is a distraction, especially considering how little strategic value the M.E. is to the U.S. today. Historically, the U.S. had justified its involvement in the M.E. based on the strategic importance of oil to the U.S. economy. Today, however, imports of crude oil and petroleum products from OPEC is down 75%; meanwhile, U.S. production of crude oil and petroleum products has increased by over 250%, making the U.S. a net exporter of crude oil and petroleum products. At the same time, the volume of trade between the U.S. and the entire regionof the M.E.
is merely around 1% of the total value of U.S. trade. Despite this trend, the number of U.S. military bases in the M.E. has increased from a small handful of bases during the Cold War with which we were able to confront the Soviet Union and protect the flow of oil, to 25bases today.
The U.S. should pull back from the M.E., and the U.S. and the M.E. will be better off for it. After decades of deepening U.S. engagement in the region, the M.E. today is not flourishing with the liberal democracy the neoconservatives imagined, but is a cesspool of nationalists, Islamists, theocracies, autocracies and dictatorships mired in corruption. Turkey, once hailed as an example of democratization in the Muslim world, is increasingly authoritarian and irredentist. Israel and the Palestinian territories under its control are being called a single “apartheid” regime by leading Israelihuman right groups
.
On terrorism, the record is not much better. Al Qaeda, once operating in the mountainous region of Afghanistan, is now in Idlib on the Mediterranean, bordering Turkey, a NATO country, and ISIS, a far more violent group than Al Qaeda ever was, has spread to over 18 countries. Regime-change operations in Iraq, Libya, and Syria have emboldened Turkey and Iran and expanded their reach in the region through armed proxy jihadi groups. These regime-change operations have plunged Iraq, Libya, and Syria into war and destruction for over a decade, the human cost of which is incalculable. Those countries were once middle-income countries and are now on the brink of starvation, with devastated infrastructure and crippled health care systems. The unilateral broad sanctions imposed by the U.S. on Syria are exacerbating an already dire humanitarian crisis. The sanctions are hitting the reconstruction, energy, health care, banking, and agricultural sectors. These sanctions are indiscriminate and are affecting a large section of the population and disproportionately hitting the poor and vulnerable, leaving many Syrian children going to bed cold and hungry. These sanctions have pushed Syria deeper into the Iranian orbit and have made it dependent on Russia. There is agreement in foreign policy circles that sanctions will not force regime-change; they have only harmed innocent Syrians. Everyone in the U.S. intelligence community as well as many politicians from both parties know that while there is a legitimate political opposition to the Syrian government, Assad has been fighting jihadists that cover the entire spectrum of Salafi-jihadism. All the armed groups fighting Assad called for a greater application of Sharia law. The U.S. tried to fashion a “moderate” rebel force, but failed. And for a large section of the Syrian population, a jihadist win is not merely a political issue, but an existential one. It is abundantly clear now to all sober and independent political observers that the U.S.’s deepening involvement in the M.E. is counterproductive. It has made the region worse off, at a huge cost to the U.S. treasury and at the expense of thousands of American lives. It is time to pull back. The first step for the U.S. out of the M.E. should be to reverse the last one it made, to pull its troops out of Syria and allow for reunification and reconstruction of this war-torncountry.
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Categories: Uncategorized WHY AMERICA AND ISRAEL NEED A NEW IRAN STRATEGY POSTED BY JOSHUA ON SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 29TH, 2020 BY STEVEN SIMON, JOSHUA LANDIS & AIMAN MANSOUR PUBLISHED: HAARETZ 29 NOVEMBER 2020 The U.S. and Israel have two problems with Iran: its regional meddling and its nuclear aspirations. Their current approach, which devolves to bumping off senior officials, imposing extraterritorial sanctions, and abandoning negotiated agreements isn’t working, and seems unlikely to work in the future. To deal with Iran’s regional activism, the U.S. assassinated Quds Force General Qassem Soleimani on Iraqi soil; to deal with the nuclear challenge, Israel apparently killed Mohsen Fakhrizadeh,
an important Iranian nuclear scientist. While there’s no question that killing competent, even inspirational managers like Soleimani or Fakhrizadeh can cause administrative setbacks, assassination doesn’t solve the underlying problem. It does, however, incur risks both in the near term and down the road. In the latest instance, many Democrats see an Israeli attempt in collusion with the outgoing Trump administration to preempt a return to negotiations with Iran. This perception will only make it harder to sustain the relationship as a bipartisan priority over the long haul. More generally, killings of this kind are legally questionable and lower the barrier for other states that might want to get in on the game. At this stage, “maximum pressure” might have damaged Iran’s economy, but it has also resulted in a renewed stockpile offissile material
and reduced lead time to a bomb. Incinerating Soleimani didn’t reduce Iranian influence in Iraq at all, but triggered Shi’a militia rockets landing in the Baghdad Green Zone. There’s a better way to deal with these underlying problems. On the nuclear side, the U.S. could go back to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), https://www.haaretz.com/misc/tags/TAG-iran-nuclear-deal-1.5598931 assuming the Biden team can successfully engage an Iranian leadership that has little reason to trust Washington. Prime Minister Netanyahu has already fired a warning against such an effort; in a divided Washington, his voice will have an impact.
And the new team, like any administration, will face a complicated political landscape. The situation might yield paralysis rather thanresolution.
On the regional security side, however, an alternative strategy might be easier to apply. And that would be to direct Arab financial and commercial prowess to outbid Iran wherever it tries to get a foothold – or increase its influence – within the region. This approach might also clip the wings of an increasingly authoritarian andaggressive Turkey.
From both an American and Israeli perspective, mobilization of Arab resources to compete with Iran is simply more practical than the use of U.S. power or Israeli covert operations to subjugate or weakenit.
The Abraham Accords, followed by Netanyahu’s meeting with the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman,
gives Israel leverage to persuade its Arab partners to give nonmilitary competition with Iran a chance. These states, especially the UAE and Saudi Arabia, have the resources and the strategic instinct to outbid Iran across the board. Add Egypt to the mix, with its strong construction sector, and the monopoly that Iran enjoys – or is trying to cultivate – in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon will shrink. The Trump administration, which viewed Iraq as a stalking horse for Iran, Syria as Tehran’s vassal, and the Lebanese state as irrelevant, could never do this. A new U.S. administration focused less on coercively rolling back the Iranian threat and more on crowding it out of the Arab world could achieve more at less risk. Likewise, instead of trying to starve Syria to turn it into a quagmire for Iran and Russia, the Biden administration could restructure sanctions so that Arab states eager to get on with reconstruction – and having the means to do so – can get to work. Instead of pushing Syria into Iran’s embrace, this approach would marginalize Tehran by demonstrating its relative incapacity and creating an alternative toits support.
This same tack could be applied to Lebanon as well, where the Trump administration had decided the best way to limit Iran’s influence was to torment the Lebanese people, as though they would have the capacity to disarm Hizballah to avert whatever new punishment Washington might devise. Iran is not the only adversary that requires a rethink. Turkey has emerged as a disruptor in a region that is trying to settle down. The Trump administration catered to Erdogan’s aggressive maneuvering, giving a green light to Turkish occupation of a large chunk of Syrian territory and the depredations of Turkish-supported militias against Kurds that had fought with the U.S. against ISIS. Erdogan, it should be remembered, afforded these jihadists safe haven. Trump’s approach emboldened Ankara to become an aggressive player in the Eastern Mediterranean (while threatening other NATO allies, especially Greece) and to assert itself in the Azerbaijan-Armenia crisis. Biden will have to mobilize an Arab coalition to clip Turkey’s wings while exploring ways to encourage Turkish restraint, via pressure from its NATO allies. These policy departures won’t solve every regional problem. The Palestinians will remain isolated, the political opposition in nearly every regional state will still be at risk, and economic and environmental security for many will remain elusive. A way forward for Palestinians will still need to be found, Egypt will have to be pushed to restore civil liberties, Saudi Arabia must stop its attacks on noncombatants in Yemen, a political transition in Syria remains be be negotiated. For the US at least these objectives – among others — will remain important. But a new strategy of promoting Arab cooperation and Israel’s further integration into its surroundings can go a long way toward reducing risk of conflict and improving quality of life – even survival – for the peoples hardest hit by civil war and state breakdown. Instead of continuing with “maximum pressure,” the U.S. and Israel should opt for “smart pressure,” exerted through non-violent competition wielded by regional Arab states. This won’t usher in the Age of Aquarius and render hard power irrelevant. But rather than single-handedly trying to roll back Iran and Islamic radicalism, which have filled the void left by state collapse in the region, it is imperative that the U.S. and Israel help Arab states take a constructive role in using soft power to build a more durable balance of power and shape the post-Arab Spring Middle East for the better. JOSHUA LANDIS holds the Sandra Mackey Chair & is Director of the Center of Middle East Studies & Farzaneh Family Center for Iranian and Persian Gulf Studies at the University of Oklahoma. AIMAN MANSOUR served in the Israeli National Security Council for 13 years; his last post was as head of the Middle East and AfricaDivision.
STEVEN SIMON served on the National Security Council in the Clinton and Obama administrations and is Professor of International Relationsat Colby College
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Categories: Uncategorized THE SYRIAN PRIME MINISTER WAS A DOUBLE AGENT WHO GAVE CRUCIAL INTELLIGENCE TO DAVID BEN-GURION POSTED BY CHRIS SOLOMON ON SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 14TH, 2020 Jamil Mardam with Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince(later king) Faisal
By Meir Zamir
First published in Haaretz newspaper on November 13, 2020 In the summer of 1945, no one was more hated by French officials in Syria and Lebanon than Jamil Mardam. Intelligence information obtained by France revealed that Mardam, the prime minister of Syria under the French mandate there, had been recruited by Brig. Iltyd Clayton, head of MI6 in the Middle East, and by Nuri Sa’id, the Iraqi prime minister. Mardam had also reportedly agreed to a plan whereby Syria, after the expulsion of France from its mandated territories, would unite with Iraq and with Transjordan under the Hashemite family, and Britain – which controlled those two countries – would enjoy hegemony in Damascus as well. For Mardam’s part in what was called the “Greater Syria” plan, he received handsome sums and was promised that he would rule in Syria, under the Hashemite monarch. That information was only the opening round in a dramatic – and previously unknown – episode that helped shape the Middle East as we know it. What happened was that the French decided to exploit the situation for their own purposes and began to blackmail Mardam. They threatened to publish the documents in their possession and to leak the information to his political foes. Mardam ultimately resigned in August 1945 after consulting with his British handlers, but they did not know that he had capitulated to blackmail and had become a double agent. In that period, with the future of the region hanging in the balance, Mardam provided the French with valuable information about the intentions of the British military and intelligence services inthe Middle East.
But the story doesn’t end there. Research in French and Israeli archives, together with a perusal of Syrian government documents, now shows that the Syrian prime minister was actually handled by a Zionist intelligence agent together with the French. The information that was conveyed through his auspices to David Ben-Gurion was critical to the Zionist leader’s strategy during the period leading up to the state’s establishment. It all began in October 1945, when the French encountered a new problem. Mardam had been appointed Syria’s ambassador to Egypt and its envoy to the Arab League headquarters in Cairo, but the French had a hard time utilizing him there without arousing suspicion. The solution was to recruit Eliahu Sasson for the mission of relaying the information provided by Mardam. Sasson, who was then the head of the Arab division of the Jewish Agency’s political department, had been appointed by Agency head Ben-Gurion in February 1945 to coordinate cooperation with French intelligence. The Syrian-born Sasson knew Mardam and had met with him in 1937, when the latter had served an earlier term as prime minister. The French, who were well acquainted with Sasson and thought highly of his operational capabilities, began to collaborate with him inhandling Mardam.
Eliahu Sasson
The documents show that on November 12, 1945, Sasson met with Mardam in Cairo; he did so again six days later, when Mardam visited Jerusalem as head of an Arab League delegation to arrange Palestinian representation in the League. Following these encounters, Ben-Gurion met with Sasson, and in a diary entry of November 22, related details of the Jewish Agency official’s conversations with Mardam. This is one of the few occasions when Mardam can be identified directly as an intelligence source of Ben-Gurion’s. In the years that followed, both French intelligence and Sasson concealed by various means the fact that Mardam was the source of information, in order not to exposehim.
However, information first uncovered in the diary of Maurice Fischer, an intelligence officer in the military headquarters of the Free French Forces in Beirut, who had previously served in the Haganah pre-state militia and was later to become Israel’s first ambassador to France, provides additional evidence that Mardam was an important source of information for Ben-Gurion. Fischer writes that Mardam revealed the secret Anglo-Iraqi plan to establish the so-called Greater Syria to Zionist agents in Cairo. Further confirmation of the Syrian envoy’s importance vis-a-vis the Zionist effort appears in a report by Nahum Wilensky, who served as liaison between Fischer and the top ranks of the Agency’s political department. In a report in September 1945, he noted that a “ general related, among other items, that the French are in possession of authoritative documents attesting that many Syrian leaders received sums of money from the English. The French are waiting for a propitious moment to publish these papers, and in the meantime are using them to put pressure on the leaders named in the documents. Heading the list is Mardam.” From July 1945, Ben-Gurion had prepared for the possibility of an attack by the Arab states should the Jewish state declare its independence. But the information from Mardam turned the spotlight elsewhere. Ben-Gurion learned that the immediate threat to the establishment of the Jewish state lay not in an attack by Arab armies, but rather in the plan of British military commanders and intelligence agencies in the Middle East to thwart that development by various other means. These included declaring the Haganah militia a terrorist organization and disarming it, and implementing the Greater Syria plan, under which a limited Jewish entity would be created in Mandatory Palestine, but not an independent state. It was apparently also Mardam who revealed the fact that British intelligence had recruited an agent who was operating in the Jewish Agency and conveying to his superiors information about the discussions being held by the Agency’s leadership, including copies of the minutes of its most secret meetings. According to the information passed on by Mardam, the Arab rulers who were fearful of Soviet intervention had decided to assist the British in the event of an all-out war in the Middle East between the Soviet Union and the West, while London’s policy was to play for time in order to rehabilitate its economy and set relations with the United States on a solid footing. As to the Palestinian question, in deliberations of the Arab League council concern was expressed that ongoing Jewish immigration to Palestine would allow the Haganah to field an army of an estimated 80,000 troops and that “we will never be able to match them in preparation and organization, even if the English help us.” Accordingly, the Arab leaders wanted the British Army to remain in Palestine. In the end, the Greater Syria scheme was foiled by the Saudi monarch, Ibn Saud, who saw it as a threat to his kingdom. He enlisted the support of U.S. President Harry Truman and the State Department, resulting in heavy pressure being brought to bear on London. On July 14, 1946, the British government was compelled to declare that it did not support the Greater Syria project. Nevertheless, the British military and secret services in the Middle East continued their efforts to establish a Hashemite Greater Syria as part of a regional defense alliance against the Soviet threat.BACK TO DAMASCUS
The events that occurred in 1946 confirmed the accuracy of the information conveyed by Mardam about British military intentions in Palestine. To begin with, in May of that year Brig. Iltyd Clayton, in collaboration with Abd al-Rahman al-Azzam, secretary of the Arab League and also a British agent, initiated a meeting of the heads of the Arab states at the Inshas Palace in Cairo. The conference’s resolutions asserted for the first time that Zionism constituted a danger not only to the Palestinians but to all the Arab states. A second meeting of the Arab League council was held in June in Bloudan, near Damascus. Some of its resolutions, which were secret, stated that the danger existed of a military confrontation with the Zionist movement, and in that case the Arab states would be duty-bound to assist their Palestinian brethren with money, arms and manpower. Mardam was present at the Bloudan discussions, as was Sasson, who returned thereafter to Jerusalem with the information about the secretresolutions.
Subsequent moves by the British military and secret services corroborated Mardam’s information. On June 29, 1946, in what was known as “the Agatha Operation” – or “Black Sabbath,” in Hebrew – British Army units arrested leaders of the Jewish Agency, notably foreign policy head Moshe Sharett, confiscated files in the Agency’s Jerusalem headquarters and raided a large number of kibbutzim in a search for illegal arms. The true goal of the operation was to disarm the Haganah and replace the “extremist leadership” – first and foremost Ben-Gurion – with more moderate figures. The British operation largely failed, as details about it had leaked to the Haganah’s leadership two months earlier. Ben-Gurion escaped arrest, as he was in Paris at the time. The British also tried to find proof of French support for the Zionist movement – the files of Eliahu Sasson were among the first they seized – but they found nothing that might suggest it. The King David Hotel To justify the Agatha Operation, on July 25, three days after the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, the British government published a “white paper”, which included intercepted coded cables which it claimed indicated that the leaders of the Jewish Agency and the Haganah were responsible for acts of terrorism. Two days later, Ben-Gurion held a press conference in Paris in which he sharply condemned the blowing up of the King David Hotel by the Revisionist Irgun (Etzel) militia, rejected the claims of Jewish Agency and Haganah involvement in terrorism and imputed responsibility for Black Sabbath to the commanders of the British Army in Cairo and to officials in the Foreign Office. He was more explicit in a message to the Mapai party conference on August 23: “The assault of June 29 was prepared in March or April this year by the initiators of British policy in the Middle East – the most reactionary circle of the diplomatic, military and colonial bureaucracy, whose center is in Cairo.” After all, Ben-Gurion had known about these schemes earlier, from information provided byMardam.
STRINGS AND TRIGGERS In December 1946, Clayton forced Syrian President Quwatly to remove the prime minister, Saadallah al-Jabiri, because of his part in scuttling the Greater Syria plan, and to replace him with Jamil Mardam. The move was intended to make it possible for Mardam to ensure a parliamentary majority for the plan. But Mardam now began to distance himself from the British, although MI6 continued to see him as a trusted agent, and to demonstrate greater readiness to cooperate with the French. Indirect corroboration of this is found in Syrian government documents. For example, Mardam cautioned his ambassador in London about intrigues of “our British friends who are warning us about French attempts to stir ferment among the Druze and the Bedouin tribes in the Syrian Desert against the government in Damascus, when in practice their agents are responsible for this.” Mardam’s return to Damascus from Cairo enabled the French to run him directly, without Sasson’s mediation. In the summer of 1946, France had established diplomatic relations with Syria and established a consulate in Damascus in which intelligence agents operated under diplomatic guise. These representatives were able to meet with Mardam in their official capacity without arousing suspicion. In any event, after the failure of British efforts to resolve by force the problem of the Jews in Palestine, the mission was imposed on the Arab armies. I have described this stage, which began in August 1947 and reached its peak with the invasion of the nascent Jewish state by the Arab armies following the state’s establishment, in May 1948, in two previous articles: Intelligence Documents Reveal What Ben-Gurion Knew,
May 14, 2020
Israel’s Secret war for Syria’s Independence,
June 20, 2018
René Neville, the French consul in Jerusalem, rightly termed Clayton and other British agents as “string pullers” and the Arab leaders who were maneuvered by them as “squeezers of the trigger.” In the wake of the defeat of the Arab states in the 1948 war, storm winds of political, social and economic unrest swept the old regimes in Syria, Egypt and Iraq. One of the victims of the upheavals was Jamil Mardam. In December, following an acute political-economic crisis in Syria, he was again forced to step down as prime minister. He spent his last years in Cairo, where he died in 1960, with the chapter in his life in which he collaborated with the French and the Zionists remaining unknown until now. In February 1947, Ben-Gurion met in London with British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin and praised Mardam as a moderate Arab leader. Probably, had circumstances permitted, Ben-Gurion would have expressed himself even more warmly about the Syrian prime minister. Meir Zamir is professor emeritus at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. His book on the secret Anglo-French war in the Middle East and Israel’s establishment will be published in 2021. His article “The Role of MI6 in Egypt’s Decision to Go to War Against Israel in May 1948” was published in May 2019 in the British journal _Intelligence and National Security._APPENDICES
* APRIL 15, 1944 SECRET AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE IRAQI PRIME MINISTER, NURI AL-SA’ID AND THE SYRIAN FOREIGN MINISTER, JAMILMARDAM BEY
We, Nuri al-Sa’id and Jamil Mardam Bey, have agreed: * To work together for Syria’s liberation from the yoke of the colonizers and for the unity of these countries. * To strive for the formation of an Arab Hashemite state includingSyria.
* The head of the kingdom will be and can only be Jamil Mardam. The latter, who will be the sole leader of the kingdom, will be second in rank after the designated sovereign. * Nuri Sa’id undertakes to work towards the realization of this plan and to accept the authority of the chosen sovereign. * The two parties undertake to respect this agreement, which God is the only witness thereof.Signed: Nuri
al-Sa’id and Jamil MardamTwo copies made
Author’s note: An identical agreement was signed again on September15, 1944.
2. MARCH 5, 1945 EXTRACT FROM A LETTER FROM EMIR ABDULLAH TO HIS NEPHEW, THE IRAQI REGENT ABD AL-ILAH Greetings. You are most certainly aware that we placed our hopes on Jamil Mardam’s promises and on his agreement with Nuri Pasha. Today the Prime Minister gave me positive proof of Jamil’s treason and double dealing. In reality, he only reached agreement with Nuri Pasha through ruses and hypocrisy. I think that this whole intrigue, from start to finish, is some mischief on the part of General Spears, the British ex-Minister Plenipotentiary in Syria. May God protect you. Your Uncle S/ Abdullah * MARCH 26, 1945 EXTRACT FROM A LETTER FROM EMIR ABDULLAH TO HIS NEPHEW, THE IRAQI REGENT ABDAL-ILAH
My beloved son,
I repeat it to you today and advise you to avoid slipping into the chasm the Jews and Americans want to throw us into. You know just how well-intentioned I was towards the Jews and how hard I tried to find agreement or understanding with them. When the occasion presented itself to them, they showed zeal toward Shukri al-Quwatli and Jamil Mardam. I am convinced that the latter is still betraying us despite all the money he has taken from us. The Jews today only seek to reach an understanding with all the Arab presidents except me, because they are convinced that I would not work against them. They support them to the Americans, neglecting me, as if my success was not theirs. 4. AUGUST 20, 1945 MARDAM’S LETTER OFRESIGNATION
Secret
From Jamil Mardam Bey to H.E. the President of the Republic I have just found out about the letter my colleague the Minister of the Interior kindly addressed to you and in which he makes unfounded accusations against me. I do not seek to exonerate myself, because my innocence is clear to see. Only those with evil intentions doubt it; but I beg Your Excellency to ask my colleague to provide proof and I will then be ready to account to anyone. I am convinced that there is no proof and that there are only rumors (rumors spread by lackeys of the French, enemies of this fatherland) who infiltrate government services and populist circles to reach the ears of my colleague the Minister of the Interior. I challenge anyone to show me the weak point in the policy I have followed. I do not see anyone with the right to complain about me except for the French colonizers who I have the honor of treating as my implacable enemy. I cannot allow or accept being accused by a colleague on simple suppositions. Anyway, while handing you my resignation I want to provide Parliament with an explanation.August 20,
1945
The Minister of Foreign AffairsS/ Jamil Mardam Bey
5. JANUARY 1, 1946 PRESIDENT QUWATLI INFORMS HIS CABINET MEMBERS OF BRITISH PRESSURE TO AGREE TO GREATER SYRIA PLANSecret
From the President of the Syrian Republic to the noble Council of Ministers The mission of General Clayton, head of the Special Section of Arab Middle Eastern Affairs, has two aims: First: to convince us that Syrian unity will come about; Second: to seek an understanding between Syria and Turkey. For the understanding with Turkey we have confirmed to him that we have given our agreement and that we want it within the limits of the British memorandum that has been presented to us. As for unity, he presents us with two plans: – Syrian unity including Syria, Transjordan and part of Palestine with a plebiscite on the nature of the regime and on the choice of king if the regime is a monarchy. – Arab unity including Iraq, Syria, Transjordan and part of Palestine. Then the King would be Faisal (King of Iraq) and there would be three guardians to the throne. Laws, rules, armies etc.,would be unified.
Having highlighted our clear will for independence and having asked his opinion on France’s attitude and the agreement concluded with it, he said, “This is not under discussion; when you want unity, everything will be settled with France.” Our replies were negative but were tied to Great Britain’s attitude towards us by comparison with France. If Great Britain attained the removal of French troops from Syria and Lebanon it will then be possible for us to discuss the plan he has presented. Before that, any discussion is impossible. The President of the Syrian Republic S/ Shukri al-Quwatli 6. NOVEMBER 29, 1946 SYRIAN PRIME MINISTER SA’ADALLAH AL-JABIRI IS THREATENED BY TOP MI6 AGENTTop secret
The Syrian Legation in Cairo To the Syrian Minister of Foreign Affairs The insolence with which the Friend of the Arabs, General Clayton, received me today was beyond a joke. He was not bothered about laughing at all ourefforts, saying,
“You are playing around (like children), you don’t know what you want or where you are going.” I was unable to hold a conversation with him; in fact, he seemed to have only one aim, which was to get me angry. I remained calm and replied, “I have nothing to do with you. I represent an independent country; you yourself are the agent of a friendly power, but for me you are not its representative, so I cannotrecognize you.”
He shot back, “You will know me well enough once I’m in Damascus.” In reality, I could not know where this conversation was leading; it seems that he unveiled his whole plan during the course of a conversation he had with him, to our friend Jamil whom he immediately sent to you.November 29, 1946
Sa’adallah al-Jabiri 7. JANUARY 17, 1947 THE SYRIAN AMBASSADOR IN LONDON INFORMED MARDAM ON BRITISH SUSPICIONS OF SECRET FRANCO-ZIONIST COLLABORATION INSYRIA
The Syrian Foreign Ministry – Damascus British politicians fear above all a Franco-Jewish agreement and they are convinced, here, that France itself is conducting a skewed policy with them and that Socialist-Communist intrigues will not allow the reaching of a sincere agreement between France and Great Britain. And this agreement, if it is ever signed, will not have any real importance for France has for a long time before being on an equal footing with Great Britain, in the event of a global conflict with the Soviet Union. For all these reasons, they are convinced that France, which has been unable to maintain its position in the Middle East, would shake hands with the devil himself to stop Great Britain signing as the more important party. They admit that if there is agreement with the Jews, already accomplished or possible, the help that France will provide to the Jews will be powerful, even if the modalities remain secret. Also, they are very closely watching the two French legations in Damascus and Beirut, because they are in areas favourable to Jewish activity. The British spy on everything that happens, fearing that the French Consulates, with their money, will come to the aid of the Jewish rabbis but, so far, nothing tangible hasconfirmed this.
The leaders here force us to register these realities in order to know what view of them we should take: as enemies who only want to hunt and intimidate us.17 January
1947
The Minister PlenipotentiaryNegib el Armanazi
8. MAY 8, 1947 MARDAM TO ARMANAZI ON THE FRENCH LEGATION’S ACTIVITIES IN DAMASCUSTop secret
Rest assured that the French Legation in Damascus is closely supervised: its staff will be unable to undertake any action likely to harm us. As for the content of the advice officials in the Foreign Office gave us, I am convinced that its intention is to hide their intentions, for, it is quite clear to us that from now on the French are completely incapable of doing anything in Syria. For, as you know, they do not know their lines of action; they begin with culture, cinema, religious schools and all that is simply “small beer” (unimportant). But our English friends warn us of the French intrigues towards the Bedouins and the Druze and the truth is that it is they themselves who incite them against us. Well, at the moment, we cannot subdue them for fear of the English who protect them, and if they served the French now we would not hesitate for a minute tosubdue them.
The reply you will give to the Foreign Office is that we thank them for their directives and advice which we will take into consideration. But the thing we would like you to make them take note of is that we do not want the Legation of Great Britain to be more important than the French Legation, because it is important to us to bring an end to this foreign Legation movement in our country and when we want to have contact with a foreign Power we have our Ministers Plenipotentiary there. The fact is that insulting France no longer worries people here, because they are now convinced that all those who attack the French are simply instruments of the English, so the Syrian government wants to make people understand that it is not a British tactic, but that must not stop us observing French activity and ending any movement by France in our country.8 May
1947
The Foreign MinisterJamil Mardam Bey
9. JUNE 3, 1947 MARDAM’S COMPLAINT TO BEVIN ABOUT ACTIVITIES OF BRITISH AGENTSTop
secret
From the Syrian Legation in London to H.E. the British Foreign SecretaryDear Minister,
For the seventh time I call Your Excellency’s attention to the intrigues of British officers who have the upper hand over the army of Transjordan from where aggression is directed against Syria and Syrian independence. What makes the situation even more delicate is that the plot organized against Syria is welcomed by all the British officials inthe Near East.
Neither the Syrian government, nor the Syrian people, would ever have thought that Great Britain had helped Syria drive France out so that British sovereignty could replace French sovereignty in Syria, for Transjordan and King Abdullah, as is well understood, are working to achieve British sovereignty and British interests and no more. To prove our good intentions, I place before Your Excellency the Soviet memorandum which was presented to us and to which we have so far refused to reply. But if the British Government were to push us to despair, we would have recourse to any foreign aid whatsoever to safeguard our independence which, today, is threatened more than at any other timein the past.
I hope that you will want to undertake an act that will put an end to the state of extreme tension which, in the Middle East, creates a man with illegitimate appetites who acts with the acknowledged inspiration and advice of the British.Yours sincerely,
The
President of the Council, The Minister of Foreign AffairsJamil Mardam Bey
10. 18 NOVEMBER 1947 MARDAM ON BRITISH CONSENT TO AN ARAB INVASION OF THE JEWISH STATETop secret
From H.M. Minister , AmmanTo: Foreign Office
Syrian Prime Minister telephoned Samir on the evening of 15th November and said that the British representative in Damascus had informed him that His Majesty’s Government would have no objection to the invasion of Palestine by the Arab States once the British forces had withdrawn. He asked Samir if he could obtain confirmation at Amman that this was the case. I informed Samir that I could not confirm the statement and that I did not believe that His Majesty’s Charge d’Affaires at Damascus had said any such thing. I pointed out that Jamil’s request for confirmation was suspicious and would not have been made if a statement of the kind reported had been made in such ambiguous terms.SHARE THIS:
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Categories: Uncategorized THE DEMOCRATS AND SYRIA: THE POTENTIAL FOR A REGIONAL GRAND BARGAINIF BIDEN WINS?
POSTED BY CHRIS SOLOMON ON MONDAY, OCTOBER 26TH, 2020By Kevin Amirehsani
_With the U.S. presidential election just one week away, the Democrats’ sights are set on taking back the Oval Office. Should they win, they would be wise to quickly pivot to crafting a forward-looking Syria policy. A Biden administration could offer hope for a new approach, one that addresses the Damascus-Tehran alliance while reducing the scope of regional conflicts and maintaining historic relationships with our Gulf allies._ Most observers might agree that the prospects for peace in the Levant are intrinsically tied to the tensions between Iran and its regional proxies and the Gulf monarchies and their American backers. Yet far fewer would hold out hope of Washington reducing them, especially given the prospects of a conservative hardliner winning power in Iran’s June 2021 presidential elections. However, a path to regional stability is possible, but only if the Democrats are willing to rethink their dogma in the Middle East, make tough compromises, andact quickly.
First, Biden needs to reach an accord with Iran during his first five months in power. It’s unclear whether Iran’s fractured reformist movement can survive the next decade after their decision to accept the restraints of the JCPOA backfired when Trump pulled out of it and implemented his policy of “maximum economic pressure” on Tehran. Indeed, the Iranian regime predetermined the results of February’s parliamentary elections, when the reformists were trounced, largely because they were prevented from fielding candidates for 230 of the Majlis’ 290 seats. Still, even if they don’t, and a decidedly pro-Khamenei hardliner comes to power, returning to the JCPOA or entering a similar deal could be at least tacitly enforced by the next Iranian president, since it would be in their interest for the U.S. to remove its crippling economic and financial sanctions on Iran, particularly those on its banking and oil sectors. This could be done in a phased approach, where both sides could claim an early victory, with more substantial progress on other issues (potentially even the issue of Iran’s ballistic missiles and the number of U.S. troops in Persian Gulf bases) delayed until after June. While clearly not the end-all be-all, doing so would open to the door to more cooperation in the Syrian theater. There are already hints of Damascus losing patience with its Iranian benefactors, as evidenced by Syrian government troops recently taking control of an oil field near al-Mayadin in Deir al-Zour Province following skirmishes with Iranian-backed militias. This occurred not too far from parts of the province where those same militias have come close to confrontation with Russian troops. Moreover, outside of Rojava and Idlib Province, the pro-Assad forces have successfully retaken most of the country with Russian air support, reducing their need for Iranian assistance. Elements in the Revolutionary Guards will be sure to lobby strongly against any Iranian withdrawal from Syria, but given Tehran’s financial straits, reducing their costly foreign excursions is also in their interest, assuming that they have confidence that Assad will remain in power. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Turkish President Recep TayyipErdogan in 2008.
While more difficult, it is not farfetched for Assad to eventually reach some understanding with Erdogan, especially with the backing of Iran. Recent weeks have seen Turkish troops remove a number of their observation posts near Idlib. A Damascus-Ankara détente with Tehran as a participant may be possible due to their shared suspicion of the Kurdish forces who are now in control of Manbij to Kobane, and from Al-Thawrah to Syria’s northeastern borders. While Washington should not abandon our longstanding Kurdish allies, we also should not let the wonks’ hope of an independent Kurdish state in Syria derail a wider regional solution. Face-saving compromises abound, such as a d_e jure_ Syrian federation but _de facto_ independent Rojava. This might entail allowing Syrian government troops outposts at Rojava’s border, which Ankara would much prefer in lieu of the PKK-linked Kurdish fighters. It might also mean expanded investment in oil extraction in the Kurdish region of Jazila, coupled with expanding the Syrian government’s refining capacity (which would boost their ongoing refined oil exports to the Kurds). A further swap could be reopening the vital al-Yarubiyah/Rabia border crossingto aid flows
(which would provide an economic boost to Rojava) while committing to reduce U.S. forces in the region or relaxing the stringent Caesar Actsanctions.
“ strategy in Syria, including Rojava, should be pushing for a new democratic federal system, in which the rights of all Syrian people through a new constitution,” according to Dana Taib Menmy, a freelance journalist from Iraqi Kurdistan. Of course, the Kurdish question remains one of the thorniest in the Middle East. It’s unlikely that Assad would ever allow a Rojava to emerge as a fully economically independent (and prosperous) as what occurred in Iraqi Kurdistan, which ironically is the model of a Kurdish semi-state that Ankara and Tehran can live with. Yet recenttalks
between U.S. special envoy to Syria James Jeffrey, the Syrian Kurds, and a pro-Ankara/pro-Erbil Kurdish group suggest that there are already attempts at compromise in the works. The Syrian Kurds could curry favor with Turkey and Iran by embracing the pan-ethnic nature of its SDF army and reducing its linkages with the cross-border Kurdish movements. This might also be done in concert with progress towards increased autonomy for Shia and Turkmen communities within its jurisdictions. None of these strategies on their own would be a game changer in their relations with Damascus, but could help assuage Turkey and convince Iran to pressure Assad to soften his stancetowards Rojava.
“The Assad government, the Kurds and Turkey should be able to agree on something like the _status quo ante_, where the Kurds retain self-defense capacity, but government forces man the border to placate Turkey,” says Benjamin Friedman, Policy Director at Defense Priorities, a Washington think tank. “Any idea of an independent Kurdish state should be squelched, since it would be a source of endless instability and/or demand for U.S. protection, with risks of war we don’t need.” Finally, although such a rapprochement – even modest in size – would be opposed by some of the Gulf Arab states, there are enough leverage points in their relationship with Syria and Iran to preserve the viability of a deal. For one, the UAE – long seen as one of the staunchest Iran hawks in the region – has since last year reassessed its relationship with the country, contributing to tensions with the Saudi-led anti-Houthi forces in Yemen. This is partly dueto
Abu Dhabi’s support of Libyan General Khalifa Haftar, which puts it squarely on opposite sides of the battlefield as the Turkish-backed Government of National Accord, and more broadly, its growing regional rivalry with Ankara. Indeed, the UAE has been training Syrian regime elements since January and is a major player in the country’s reconstruction, suggesting that the gulf state would be among the first of the anti-Iran old guard to temper its opposition to any larger regional deal in the works (provided that Turkey is not perceived to gain an advantage). Similarly, earlier this year Saudi Arabia allegedly began a reconciliation of sorts with the Assad regime (at the same time as it has bankrolled the presence of the U.S. troops in Rojava), an apparent realigning of resources to confront what its Gulf Arab neighbors are increasingly viewing as the main enemy – Turkey and its continued dalliance with the region’s Sunni Islamist movements. Under the right conditions, Washington can both address a number of Turkey’s security concerns outlined above while using the specter of Erdogan’s growing influence to obtain support from the Gulf Arabs for any deal involving Syria, Iran, and the Iranian proxies. While it’s obvious that several dominos would have to fall before anything approaching a regional grand bargain is reached, there are certainly some alignments of interest, and Washington is well-placed to compensate any “losers.” If Biden wins next week, the Democrats will need to seize this opportunity – it may not last. Kevin Amirehsani is a Denver-based political and economic analyst with the Colorado Governor’s Office and the Economist Intelligence Unit. He is the former managing editor of the _Raddington Report_, and his analysis has been featured in _The Wall Street Journal_, _France24_, _Deutsche Welle_, and other publications. Follow Kevin on Twitter:@KAmirehsani
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Categories: Uncategorized AMBASSADOR NIKOLAOS VAN DAM: MY GREAT PERSONAL AFFECTION FOR THE SYRIAN PEOPLE, TOGETHER WITH MY ACADEMIC INTEREST IN SYRIA, ARE THE SOURCE OF MY INSPIRATION AND ACTIVITIES. POSTED BY CHRIS SOLOMON ON WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 21ST, 2020This
interview with Dr. Nikolaos Van Dam was originally published on October 8, 2020 by the Harmoon Center for Contemporary Studies. HARMOON CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY STUDIES hosts today, DR. NIKOLAOS VAN DAM (1945), Excellency of the Dutch Ambassador, who served in 2015-2016 as a special envoy of his country to Syria, after many years of diplomatic work in Lebanon, Jordan, the occupied Palestinian territories, Libya, Iraq, Egypt, Turkey, Germany and Indonesia. The author of “The Netherlands and the Arab World .. From the Medieval until the Twentieth Century” studied political science at the University of Amsterdam. including international relations, modern Middle Eastern history, and the Arabic language. In 1973, he has got a PhD in political and social sciences, and a second one in Arts from the University of Amsterdam in 1977. Our guest, the expert on Syrian and Middle East’s affairs, is one of those who positions Syria’s dilemma in its historical and contemporary context. In 1979 he published his book in English, entitled: “The Struggle for Power in Syria: Sectarianism, Regionalism and Tribalism in Politics”, which was later translated into Arabic and published in Cairo (1995, 1996), later on, several editions of it have issued, as well as one in Turkish language inIstanbul (2000).
Among the most prominent books his book, which is entitled: Destroying a Nation: The Civil War in Syria, which was published in English (2017) and published in Arabic in Beirut (2018). In this dialogue, Dr. Nikolas Van Dam, the Ambassador, talks to us about his country’s government’s decision to prosecute Bashar al-Assad regime before the international justice Court in The Hague, after more than nine years of bloodshed in Syria, asserting that the evidence is explicit that the Assad regime has committed -again and again- horrific crimes. The dialogue with the inveterate Dutch diplomat, also took us further, to talk about what is happening in Syria at the current stage, and about his vision and stances towards the latest developments in the Syrian, regional and international political scene. We also touched upon his books dealing with Syrian political life under the Ba’ath Party, and his latest book, “A Diplomat Looking for Peace in the Arab and Islamic Worlds,” which is published in English last September, and in which he devoted a separate chapter to Syria, which he hopes to be translated into Arabic one day. HERE IS THE DIALOGUE AMBASSADOR NIKOLAOS VAN DAM: MY GREAT PERSONAL AFFECTION FOR THE SYRIAN PEOPLE, TOGETHER WITH MY ACADEMIC INTEREST IN SYRIA ARE THE SOURCE OF MY INSPIRATION AND ACTIVITIES. * AT FIRST, HOW DO YOU INTRODUCE YOURSELF TO THE SYRIANS THROUGH OURCENTER?
When I first visited Syria in summer 1964 as a student, I was fascinated and overwhelmed by the great hospitality and friendliness of the Syrian people. During my first night at the border crossing of Bab al-Hawa (which was only open during the day), I lost my purse and papers, when sleeping on a wooden bench. They fell on the ground without me noticing it, and were kindly given back to me by a young Syrian, who had found them the next morning. This was a very friendly and positive experience. If my passport and money would have been stolen, my first encounter with Syria and the Arab world would probably have been different and negative, because the first impression of a new country and its people can be very important. The following night, I was the invited guest of some Syrian youths in the rural countryside west of Aleppo, in the village of Kfar Karmin, where I slept under the open sky, next to the traditional beehive mud-brick houses in the village. The people were very friendly and hospitable. This also was a very positive experience, which was repeated various times afterwards in my contacts with Syrian people all over the country. All this left an unforgettable impression, which shaped my great affection for Syria and its people. Almost every year afterwards, I came back to Syria, enjoying its friendly atmosphere, people and beautiful treasures, both historical and cultural. After having returned to the Netherlands in 1964, I studied Arabic and Political Sciences at the University of Amsterdam. As part of my studies, I spent the greater part of 1970 in Damascus and Aleppo to write two theses: one about the ideology of the Ba’th Party and the other about the history of Syria under Ba’thist rule. This study led to my PhD thesis about _The Role of Sectarianism, Regionalism and Tribalism in the Struggle for Power in Syria_ in 1977. In 1979, I published a shorter version of it as a book in English, titled _The Struggle for Power in Syria: Sectarianism, Regionalism and Tribalism in Politics. _This book was later expanded into new editions in 1981, 1996 and 2011, each time taking later developments into account. After more than 40 years it is still considered as a widely known standard work, which has been used in universities, academic circles and elsewhere, all over the world. It was also published in Arabic in Cairo (1995, 1996) and in Turkish in Istanbul (2000). I made an internet edition available in 2009, which can be downloaded from mywebsite
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In 1975, I joined the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and worked as a junior diplomat in Lebanon, Jordan, the Palestinian Occupied Territories and Libya. Afterwards, I was ambassador for 22 years in respectively Iraq, Egypt, Turkey, Germany and Indonesia. My greatest wish to serve in Damascus was never fulfilled, but in 2015-2016 I was Special Envoy of the Netherlands for Syria, operating from Istanbul. In my book _Destroying a Nation_, I wrote about some of my experiences during this period. It was published in Arabic in 2018, and is now also available as an e-book. * AFTER MOSCOW HAVING OBSTRUCTED SEVERAL RESOLUTIONS’ DRAFTS CONDEMNING THE BASHAR AL-ASSAD REGIME’S VIOLATIONS AGAINST CIVILIANS IN SYRIA, THE DUTCH GOVERNMENT DECIDED TO PROSECUTE THE SYRIAN REGIME BEFORE THE INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE IN HAGUE, ACCORDING TO WHAT WAS REPORTED IN A LETTER WRITTEN BY THE DUTCH FOREIGN MINISTER TO PARLIAMENT ON FRIDAY (SEPTEMBER 18, 2020). IN YOUR APPRECIATION, WHY DID YOUR COUNTRY’S GOVERNMENT TAKE THIS STEP NOW? WHAT IS YOUR STANCE ON THIS MEASURE AS A FIRST ONE OF ITS KIND FROM A WESTERN GOVERNMENT? DO YOU EXPECT THAT THIS STEP WILL HAVE AN EFFECT IN MAKING ANY CHANGE IN THE SYRIAN POLITICAL SCENE IF ASSAD AND HIS PILLARS’ RULE ARE CONVICTED AFTER IT IS PROVEN THAT THEY HAVE COMMITTED WAR CRIMES AND CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY, ESPECIALLY TORTURE, MURDER, ENFORCED DISAPPEARANCE, AND THE USE OF CHEMICAL WEAPONS? The Netherlands announced its decision to hold Syria responsible under international law for gross human rights violations and torture in particular. The evidence is overwhelming that the Asad regime has committed horrific crimes time after time. The Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs has declared that there must be consequences. Since Russia will block any attempt to bring the Syrian regime before justice via the UN Security Council, a different way was sought andfound.
International organizations have repeatedly reported serious human rights violations for years. Large numbers of Syrians have been tortured, murdered, forcibly disappeared, and subjected to poison-gas attacks, or have lost everything fleeing for their lives. The Netherlands has invoked Syria’s responsibility for human rights violations under international law, specifically holding Syria responsible for torture under the UN Convention against Torture. The timing of this initiative coincided with the sessions of the United Nations General Assembly, and therefore got extra attention. I think this is a good initiative, and better than doing nothing. It might even have been initiated years ago, because proof of the crimes involved already exists for many years. Personally, I do not think that it will cause any real changes in the political scene on the ground. The Syrian regime has immediately strongly rejected the Dutch initiative, arguing that The Hague is the last capital that should accuse Syria, because it accuses the Dutch government of supporting Syrian terrorist organizations. In any case, this initiative may bring some movement in making the Syrian regime accountable for its atrocities. But if you really want to bring people before justice, you have to catch them, instead of having them tried in absentia. The Hague likes to call itself the “international city of peace and justice”. This name is well deserved in the sense that, according to its municipality, “thousands of people are working here every day to build a more peaceful and just world”. But when it comes to Israel, this name is not justified, at least when taking into account the policies concerned of the Dutch government, which thus far has condoned more or less all Israeli gross human rights violations, and has not done anything practical against it. * HOW DO YOU LOOK AT WHAT IS HAPPENING IN SYRIA IN THE PRESENT PERIOD? AND WHAT IS YOUR MESSAGE TO ALL THE PARTIES OF THE SYRIAN-SYRIANCONFLICT?
After more than 9 years of bloodshed, I cannot keep repeating my earlier elementary advises, because that would not be realistic. Times have changed, and the heavy burden of deadly victims, millions of refugees and material destruction have all asked their toll, making any compromise even more difficult than before. The situation in Syria has turned out to be a disaster since the start of the Syrian Revolution in 2011. From the very beginning, my message has been that in order to solve the conflict, it was necessary to have a dialogue between the opposition and the regime. But quite early on, any dialogue with the regime was strongly rejected, not only by the opposition but also by many foreign countries, which broke off diplomatic relations with Damascus and closed their embassies. Their message was that president al-Asad had lost his legitimacy, and therefore had to leave. Many demonstrators demanded the fall of the regime and the execution of the president (_al-Sha’b yurid isqat al-Nizam; al-Sha’b yurid I’dam al-Ra’is_). And the regime did not want any dialogue with those who wanted its downfall andpersecution.
The extremely violent reactions of the regime to previous efforts to topple or oppose it, like the Muslim Brotherhood uprising in Hama (1982), or other occasions, made it unthinkable for me that the regime would willingly give in to any threats against its position, let alone efforts to topple it. But emotional and enthusiastic feelings for justice prevailed over realism, together with the dangers accompanyingit.
Of course, the demonstrators had been inspired by the swift fall of the presidents of Tunisia and Egypt, and the killing of the Libyan leader al-Qadhafi after foreign military interventions against his regime. But the structure of the Syrian regime, with its Alawi-dominated power elite, was completely different. Moreover, it had half a century of experience in how to effectively and ruthlessly deal with any coups and threats against its position. The most potential possibility for toppling it, could come from within the regime, but not anyone from its inner core dared to take any initiative in this direction for fear of being liquidated. Many Syrians of the opposition, and with them many Western politicians who supported them, expected the regime to fall by the latter half of 2012. But this turned out to be fully unrealistic, as they did not take the strong and coherent power structure of the Syrian regime into account. The regime wanted to survive, whatever the costs. In March 2012, I argued that it would be better to have al-Asad with 10,000 dead (which was the number of deadly victims at the time), rather than to have al-Asad with 300,000 dead (which later even turned out to be even worse by going in the direction of half a million dead). For this, a dialogue with the regime had been necessary. In my opinion it was better to have a failed dialogue than to have a failed war, with half a million dead, more than 10 million refugees and a country in ruins. But many refused any dialogue with the regime, arguing that this was useless anyhow. As Special Envoy for Syria, I aimed at providing the Syrian opposition with what I considered to be some realistic counsel. I could, of course, have taken the easier, more popular way of joining the opposition and many others in their wishful thinking that the Asad regime was going to be brought down anyhow through political pressure, UN resolutions and military support from Western and Arab countries, but these countries created false expectations. They had so-called “good intentions” of helping the Syrian people, but were not really prepared to implement their declared intensions in the form of sufficient deeds and actions on the ground. I rejected the idea of creating false expectations, because it contributed to making the situation even worse than it already was. Direct military intervention was excluded by these countries, even though US president Obama had proclaimed that “there would be consequences” if certain “red lines” were crossed, such as the use of chemical weapons. Not crossing these red lines meant thereby, implicitly, that all other means of suppressing the Syrian people and the opposition groups were condoned by the US (and others). Not carrying out their promises, meant that the United States could not be considered as a reliable ally. Many people kept on thinking in terms which were in fact wishful thinking, and the countries supporting the opposition did the same. They kept turning around in the same vicious circle, arguing that one day their wishes and ideals would be realized. But the realities turned out to be different, and the human cost was disastrous. By only supporting the military opposition groups halfheartedly, and not providing them with the necessary arms (both quantitatively and qualitatively) the Western and Arab countries involved, in fact sent many of the opposition military to their death. I argued at the time that if the opposition kept insisting that president al-Asad should be deposed and brought before justice, negotiations were useless, because you cannot bring down the opposing party through peaceful negotiations, if that party happens to be militarily stronger, and is not prepared to relinquish its power. With some hindsight, I guess that the maximum achievable through negotiations at the time was a “national unity government”, in which eventually participating opposition figures could be included, but would hardly have anything to say. In fact, the regime in Damascus could have included various “moderate” opposition ministers in its government, while at the same time excluding any risk of being deposed, as long as they kept the strategic ministries, army and security agencies under their control. But the regime did not. The opposition rejected any “national unity government” because it only wanted the regime to disappear; although the opposition stated that it was prepared to share a transitional governing body with members of the Syrian government or regime who did not have blood on their hands. Inclusion of president al-Asad was fully rejected, however, although there were different opinions among the opposition about whether al-Asad would be acceptable or not during a “transitional stage” leading to a new regime without him. But this “transitional stage” never came. The opposition interpreted the Geneva Communiqué (2012) as including the principle that president al-Asad had to leave. The Americans did the same, but the Geneva Communiqué did not include any such clause, otherwise the Russians would not have agreed to it. The opposition generally took notice of my views, and some members appreciated my straightforward positions, but this did not change their original views in any way, because they maintained their “basic principles of the revolution”: bringing down the al-Asad regime and bringing to justice all those with blood on their hands. Even though these demands could have been considered fully justified from a moralistic point of view, they were not realistic in my opinion, due to the military imbalance of forces on the ground. The opposition could only have implemented their “basis principles” by winning the war and defeating the regime, but they were not strongenough to do so.
Some opposition leaders afterwards admitted that their demands had not been fully realistic under the circumstances at the time, and that demanding the disappearance of president Bashar al-Asad as a precondition had been a mistake that made realistic negotiationsimpossible.
The regime should, if it really had wanted a solution, have implemented UN Security Council 2254 (2015) without delay, and immediately allow humanitarian agencies rapid, safe and unhindered access throughout Syria to reach people in need; release any arbitrarily detained prisoners; immediately cease any attacks against civilians and civilian objects as such, including attacks against medical facilities and personnel, and any indiscriminate use of weapons, including through shelling and aerial bombardments. Implementing Security Council resolution 2254 would not really have weakened the regime’s military position, because the included measures hardly have any strategic military value; except perhaps in the sense that the military opposition groups might also profit from food and medical supplies. Bombing civilians and medical facilities, for instance, has no strategic military value. Therefore, it should have been relatively easy for the regime (and the Russians) to startimplementing it.
The opposition should in my view continue their efforts to come to negotiations with the regime on a realistic basis, including in the Constitutional Committee, even though I do not expect the regime to make real concessions to the parties that want to depose it, and have lost much of their political and military power. That does not mean, however, that it should not be seriously tried, because there are only very few options left for negotiations. Here the saying applies of “nothing ventured, nothing gained”. And miracles only happen when one keeps believing in them. In March 2018, I suggested in a lecture that it would be better to admit that the war against the regime had been lost. But almost three years later on, the war is still being continued, and Syria, as a result of the many years of the war-by-proxy with various countries involved in it, is further going down the drain with further victims and destruction. And a political solution is not getting nearer. After the war became a war-by-proxy, finding a solution was not really any longer fully in the hands of the opposition and the regime. It was the rivaling outside forces which had obtained a predominant role in co-deciding what could be a way to solve the conflict. Prolonging the war means more deadly victims, more refugees and more destruction. It is understandable that the opposition wants to continue its fight against the regime, but one should also take into account what the concrete results are in human and material costs, and pose the question: is it worth it? Isn’t it at a certain stage better to wait for a better opportunity in the future? Under the present circumstances, a new revolution is bound to come inthe future.
* AMBASSADOR, A FEW DAYS AGO, YOUR NEW BOOK WAS PUBLISHED, TITLED “A DIPLOMAT SEEKING PEACE IN THE ARAB AND ISLAMIC WORLD”, WHICH CONTAINS A SUMMARY OF YOUR EXPERIENCES AND ANALYZES DURING THE YEARS OF YOUR DIPLOMATIC WORK (CAREER). CAN YOU TELL US MORE DETAILS ABOUT THE CONTENT OF THE BOOK? My new book has been published in September 2020. It contains my memoirs and analyses of my experiences during the time I worked for the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, from 1975 until my retirement in 2010: As ambassador to Iraq from the end of the war between Iraq and Iran (1988) till the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait (1990), the taking hostage of many foreigners, and Operation Desert Storm (1991), during which the Iraqi army was expelled from Kuwait. Secondly, as ambassador to Egypt under the rule of president Mubarak (1991-1996), at a time when Egypt still played a prominent political role in the Middle East. Thirdly as ambassador to Turkey, with the Turkish accession talks with the European Union, and the political change from secularism to Islamism, which made real EU membership for Turkey a fiction. Fourthly, as ambassador to Germany and the transfer of the capital from Bonn to Berlin, with the accompanying changes of forces within Europe. And fifthly, as ambassador to Indonesia, where I had to deal with the sensitive Dutch colonial past. As a junior diplomat I served in Lebanon (1980-1983) during the Lebanese civil war and the Israeli invasion (1982), in Jordan and the Palestinian Occupied Territories, and as Chargé d’Affaires in the Libya of Qadhafi (1983-1985), with his provocative regime. A separate chapter is devoted to Syria, and is based on my experiences as Special Envoy for Syria (2015-2016). Another separate chapter deals with the Arab-Israeli conflict, and is based on my experiences as secretary of the European Middle East mission in 1981 (the most extensive of its kind) and my experiences in the subsequent decades. Much of what is happening today in de Palestinian-Israeli conflict, was fully predictable some 40 years ago, if we would have better realized that the Israelis were not prepared to make any real compromise. The Israeli key positions have remained the same: no withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders, no Palestinian State, and an “eternally united Jerusalem”. The core positions of Likud and Labor were the same: keeping control over the whole of Palestine, with as few Palestinians as possible. The main difference was the way in which they presented themselves. One of the major problems has been that more or less everything Israel did has been condoned by Western countries. The United States has even encouraged it, and its recognition of the annexations of Eastern Jerusalem and parts of the Golan Heights constitutes a serious undermining of the order of international law. The United States has never been an honest broker, but rather “_Brokers of Deceit_”, as described in the book of Rashid al-Khalidi titled “_How the US has Undermined Peace in the Middle Eas_t” (2013). European countries criticized Israeli behavior, but did do nothing against it, except for issuing statements, deploring what happened. Since European governments are not going to do anything to really help solving the conflict, I think the non-governmental BDS-movement (Boycott-Divest-Sanctions) is fully justified. I hope the chapters on Syria and the Arab-Israeli conflict can be made available in Arabic one day. There is too much in the book to present here in short detail. * IN YOUR NEW BOOK, YOU HAVE DEALT WITH YOUR PERSONAL ANALYZES OF YOUR EXPERIENCE AS A SPECIAL ENVOY FOR THE NETHERLANDS TO SYRIA. CAN YOU LET US KNOW THE MOST PROMINENT POSITIONS THAT YOU HAVE STOOD ON WHICH LED TO PROTRACTING THE LIFE OF THE SYRIAN DISASTER, WHETHER BY THE BOSS OF THE SYRIAN REGIME, THE OPPOSITION FORCES, OR EXTERNAL ARAB ANDWESTERN FORCES?
Most of my experiences as the Dutch Special Envoy for Syria have already been published in my book _Destroying a Nation_. In my new book I dwell on some of the incompatibilities between democracy and realpolitik. Politicians in democracies want to show their good intentions by making political statements, supporting in the Syrian case the Syrian opposition, but when it comes to realpolitik, they are unwilling to implement what they have been proposing, except when it comes to some sanctions. Therefore, most of their statements remain statements, without being implemented. My new book further deals with the way the conflict in Syria is being dealt with in Dutch internal and foreign politics. The factors that have contributed to the disastrous war in Syria and its prolongation are many. I mention only some of the most importantones.
– The violent suppression by the _Syrian regime _of the demonstrations and its ruthless violent suppression of any opposition. Its rejection of any essential reform which could, in its own perception, undermine its power monopoly. – The declaratory support of various _foreign countries _for the opposition forces, without them being prepared to mobilize the necessary means and providing the necessary military and material support to help achieving their declared (or undeclared) aim of regimechange.
– Providing billions of dollars in military aid to the military opposition groups in an uncoordinated way, which turned out to be insufficient to win the battle against the regime. – Creating false expectations among the opposition by Western andArab countries.
– Russian and Iranian support for the regime helped these two countries in maintaining their strategic ally in Damascus. – The occupation of parts of Syria by Turkey, the United States, Russia and Iran have contributed to prolonging the conflict, just as have the endeavors by these states to serve their own strategic interests in the region, without taking the suffering of the Syrian people enough into account. _– The opposition_ has allowed itself to being deceived to some extent by the so-called good intentions of the foreign forces that expressed their support. – Overdoses of wishful thinking have prolonged the war, while at the same time neglecting the hard realities of realpolitik. – Seeking justice, without having the power to bring those responsible for the committed crimes to justice, except in some individual court cases abroad. In itself it is a good thing to bringing those responsible for war crimes and bloodshed to justice, but this does not mean that the conflict is brought to an end swifter than would otherwise be the case. * WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF YOUR PERSONAL INTEREST IN THE SYRIAN DILEMMA, AND TO SET IT THROUGH YOUR WRITINGS, IN ITS HISTORICAL AND CONTEMPORARY CONTEXT, USING A UNIQUE BLEND OF ACADEMIC UNIQUENESS AND DIPLOMATIC EXPERIENCE? My personal and academic interest for Syria, which started in 1964, and my great personal affection for the people of Syria and the country are the source for my continuous activity and inspiration to help analyze what may be the better (or less bad) options for achieving a solution to the conflict. Having a wider experience in both the academic and diplomatic field can be a fruitful combination, which may be better than having experience in only one of thesefields.
* AMBASSADOR, ALLOW US TO RETURN WITH YOU TO YOUR BOOK “DESTROYING A NATION. THE CIVIL WAR IN SYRIA”, WHICH WAS TRANSLATED AND PUBLISHED BY THE “JANA TAMER FOR STUDIES AND PUBLISHING HOUSE” IN BEIRUT, (2018). I WOULD ASK YOU: WHAT ARE THE MOST PROMINENT CONCLUSIONS THAT YOU REACHED IN THE CONTEXT OF FINDING SOLUTIONS AND EXITS TO THE FLAMING SYRIAN CRISIS? Anyone with some knowledge of the regime should have known that any effort to topple it would lead to a bloodbath, as I predicted in the second edition of my book _The Struggle for Power in Syria_, which was published in 1981, 30 years before the start of the Syrian Revolution in 2011. And this was not difficult to predict. If you want to defeat a lion, you must be well armed and be in the stronger position, in order to prevent not to be killed oneself. But the reality for the military opposition forces turned out to be that of the weaker party. The opposition military were not in such a strong position, and once they started to threaten the regime to some extent in 2015, Russia intervened militarily. Often, it is pointed out that the Asad regime has caused many more deaths than the opposition groups altogether. And that is correct: roughly 90% of all victims have been the result of military and other actions of the regime. This is often used as an argument to underline that only the regime is responsible for the disastrous situation in which Syria finds itself. This does not, however, fully exonerate those who tried to topple the regime, because they could have known the bloody consequences, even though these groups themselves might be held responsible for “only” 10% of the deadly victims. When discussing the controversial concept of who carries responsibility for the present situation in Syria, the hard reality should also be taken into account of who has achieved a certain victory and who has been defeated. Perhaps the situation would have been completely different if the military and civilian opposition forces together would have succeeded in bringing peace, and in creating a “new Syria” that could be described by the ideal characteristics and aims, as described by the Higher Council for Negotiations in 2016: “A political system based on democracy, pluralism and a citizenship that provides for equal rights and duties for all Syrians without any discrimination on basis of color, gender, language, ethnicity, opinion, religion or ideology.” In such a case, it could have been argued that the war of the opposition against the regime “had been worth it”, because it would have led to a substantial improvement of the situation in Syria. In reality, however, this did not happen, because the military opposition or – better said – the numerous opposition groups altogether, did not succeed in defeating the regime. Therefore, it can be argued that the opposition groups, together with the countries supporting them, at least bear a large co-responsibility (together with the regime) for the disastrous consequences which the war has had for all Syrians; this irrespective of the fact that the regime has numerically caused by far the most victims and material destruction. Having the right ideals does not mean that one does not have any co-responsibility when things go wrong when trying to achieve them. If you want to negotiate, and demand the disappearance and court martialing of your opponent, which is militarily stronger, it is impossible to achieve a political solution. Negotiations are doomed to failure if the aim is to eradicate your opponent, while refusing to come to any compromise with the opposing party. A compromise implies that the negotiating parties are not fully eradicated once the agreement reached is being implemented. Regime change in Syria can only be achieved by military means. In order to really know what I wrote in the book, one should read itoneself.
* WE HAVE NOTED THE OBJECTION OF MANY SYRIAN REVOLUTIONARIES TO DESCRIBING WHAT HAS HAPPENED AND IS HAPPENING IN SYRIA AS A “CIVIL WAR,” CONSIDERING THAT THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE SYRIAN WAR DOES NOT DEVIATE FROM THE CONTEXT OF BEING AGGRESSION BY THE BASHAR AL-ASSAD REGIME AGAINST ITS PEOPLE WHO ROSE UP AGAINST ITS AUTHORITARIAN RULE IN MID-MARCH 2011, WITH THE HELP OF EXTERNAL INTERVENTION MILITARILY. WHAT IS YOUR RESPONSE TO THOSE? I should start by noting that the vast majority of the mass media and reporters use the terminology of “civil war” to describe the bloody conflict in Syria, such as: BBC, CNN and Al-Jazeera, just like most academic authors and journalists. Only a tiny minority of writers specifically rejects this terminology, being fully aware of the sensitivities of opposition circles in this respect. This in itself does not imply, however, that the terminology is correct or wrong. Most of those who have criticized me for speaking about a “civil war”, have apparently only read the outside cover of my book containing the title of eight words, without reading the contents of the book itself. Had they done so, they would have discovered that I have explained in my book that “as a result of foreign support, the war in Syria developed into a war by proxy, next to being an internal intra-Syrian war. Therefore, the terminology of ‘civil war’ was no longer appropriate.” My father used to say: “It would be nice if people reviewing a book would also really read it.” In the Arabic edition of my book, I have given an additional explanation about its usage based on academic research. It is all a matter of terminology. One might argue that it was the regime that waged “a war against its own people”, but one cannot deny that a great many people wanted to bring down the regime, and were subsequently indignant and angry, once the regime did not want to step down voluntarily, as could have been expected. It has not developed into just one side waging war against the other, because otherwise the regime would have won long ago, but also into Syrian opposition military waging war against the regime. * WHAT IS THE MEANING OF PROFESSOR FABRICE BALANCHE (RESEARCH DIRECTOR AT LYON 2 UNIVERSITY), WHO SAID THAT “ANYONE WHO WANTS TO LOOK AT THE FUTURE OF SYRIA, ESPECIALLY IF HE IS IN THE PROCESS OF MAKING NEW DECISIONS, HE SHOULD READ THIS BOOK, WHICH IS NECESSARY FOR A DEEPER UNDERSTANDING OF THE SYRIAN CRISIS. IT DELVES INTO HISTORY AND DISMANTLES THE SECTARIAN DIMENSION OF SOCIETY AND POWER IN SYRIA?”. Actually, this question should be addressed to professor Fabrice Balanche himself. He, in fact, recommends reading my book because it is based on in-depth research and experience, and on what he considers to be a more realistic approach. My argument is that one should not only take into account what is idealistically desirable, but also what is realistically achievable. Ignoring realities has led to a lot of additional bloodshed. * WHAT THE BOOK IS CREDITED FOR, IS THAT IT ANALYZES THE DIMENSIONS OF THE SYRIAN TRAGEDY, NOT ONLY FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF DOMESTIC POLITICS IN (ASSAD’S SYRIA), BUT ALSO EXPLORES THE SYRIAN-ARAB-ISRAELI CONFLICT, THE SYRIAN-AMERICAN RELATIONS, AND THE SYRIAN-RUSSIAN RELATIONS. THIS INVITES ME TO ASK YOU, IF WE ACCEPT THAT THE SOLUTION CAME OUT OF THE SYRIANS’ HAND, THEN WHO HAS THE SOLUTION, RUSSIA, THE STRONGEST ALLY OF THE ASSAD REGIME, OR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND, IN THE BACKGROUND ISRAEL? AND WHY? The final say in any solution to the conflict in Syria should be in the hands of the Syrians themselves, of course. Since, however, various outside powers started to intervene in the war in Syria, also at the request of various Syrian parties themselves, it has become inevitable that in any solution the main foreign parties should also agree to some extent among themselves on how this should be achieved. One of the problems in this respect is that various foreign parties that intervened at the request of Syrian parties, both the regime and opposition groups, want to give their own regional interests priority over the wishes of the Syrian parties themselves. * AMBASSADOR, YOU WERE A SPECIAL ENVOY FOR YOUR COUNTRY FOR SYRIA IN THE YEARS 2015 AND 2016, WHICH MEANS THAT YOU MET THE HEAD OF THE SYRIAN REGIME, BASHAR AL-ASSAD MORE THAN ONCE. CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT YOUR PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS OF THIS MAN? AND IS IT REALLY, AS A NUMBER OF DIPLOMATS AND MEDIA PROFESSIONALS WHO MET HIM HAVE SPOKEN, THAT HE IS A PERSON WHO IS SEPARATED FROM THE REALITY IN WHICH SYRIA ISSINKING?
In my capacity as Dutch Special Envoy for Syria, I did not have any meetings with president Bashar al-Asad, because the Netherlands closed their embassy in Damascus and stopped diplomatic relations with the Syrian regime. This meant that contacts between Dutch diplomats and the Syrian government were prohibited. Personally, I have argued since the beginning of the Syrian Revolution that in order to help solve the conflict, contacts with the regime and the main parties to the conflict were a necessity. It happens more often that authoritarian leaders lose touch with realities, and as a result do not judge correctly how foreign countries can be expected to react to their actions or behavior. Concerning president Bashar al-Asad, I think the impression reported by various media, as if he has lost a feeling for the realities inside Syria, is exaggerated. He can follow developments closely through the media, and is being confronted, for instance, with the death of many Alawi military from his own community, and therefore has to take the feelings of their families into seriously account. His views also depend on the reports he receives from his subordinates and supporters, and these may be biased, of course. Reports about president al-Asad supposedly having lost his sense for realities inside Syria, also contain some elements of wishful thinking in the sense that outside politicians want him to do what they want, like “if he would be aware of the real situation, he would resign as president”, which I do not expect to happen. In my opinion it is just as well dangerous not to take him seriously. Likewise, it has turned out to be dangerous or reckless to underestimate his will tostay in power.
* AMBASSADOR, UPON YOUR APPRECIATION, WHAT ARE THE REASONS FOR THE FAILURE OF WESTERN POLICIES TOWARDS THE SYRIAN ISSUE, DESPITE THE FACT THAT WESTERN LEADERS EXPRESS AT ANY AVAILABLE OPPORTUNITY THAT A JUST SOLUTION MUST BE BASED ON SECURITY COUNCIL RESOLUTION 2254, AND THAT THEY INSIST THAT THEY ARE NOT WILLING TO FINANCE THE RECONSTRUCTION IN SYRIA UNDER THE ECONOMIC SANCTIONS BECAUSE OF THE CONTINUING PRESENCE OF THE ASSAD REGIME? Most Western countries failed in their policies towards Syria, because they were not prepared to communicate with the regime, and were not either prepared to intervene militarily, just as they were not prepared to effectuate the major part of their declarations and stated principles. And even if they had been willing to intervene militarily, they would not have been prepared to take up the responsibility to protect the Syrian people for another ten, twenty or more years, in order to help lead Syria into “a better future”, as they would see it. For this reason, it had been better for them not to militarily intervene at all, also not indirectly. Non-intervention would have cost much less victims, fewer refugees, and less destruction. After all the bloodshed and destruction, I don’t believe that it is possible to achieve a just solution anymore, if it was ever possible at all. It will at most have to be a compromise. Refusing to give Western financial aid to help Syria’s reconstruction does not mean that the regime will change its behavior or will give in to Western or Arab wishes for drastic internal reforms. United Nations Security Council 2254 contains some major elements for a way to a political solution, but the regime refuses to implement it, and the measures imposed on the regime, such as sanctions, will in my opinion not result in regime change. On the contrary, they are bound to lead to a further worsening of the situation for the Syrian people. Civilians will not be able to topple the regime, however desperate their situation may be. Most probably, it can only be military, toppling other military. * HOW DO YOU LOOK AT THE RUSSIAN AND IRANIAN ROLE IN SYRIA NOW, AND AT THEIR MILITARY PRESENCE IN SYRIA AND THE POSSIBILITY OF ITS CONTINUATION OR NOT? WHAT ABOUT THE FUTURE OF THE US MILITARY PRESENCE IN THE NORTH AND NORTHEAST OF THE COUNTRY? The Russian and Iranian military presence, which has been requested or accepted by the Syrian regime, is bound to continue, as long as these two countries deem it necessary to keep their Syrian ally in power. They will not give up, just to please some Western or Arab countries that are in fact hostile to them. The American military presence can be expected to be continued for some time as part of US efforts to put the regime under pressure. One of the complications of the US military presence in the North East is that they cooperate with the Kurdish dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) (which have played an important role in the fight against the Islamic State), whereas on the other hand, Turkey rejects any Kurdish autonomy on the Syrian side of its border (let alone inside Turkey itself). A strengthening of the SDF, and for that matter of the authoritarian Kurdish PYD/YPG, may result in a strengthening of the position of the PKK inside Turkey. The US cannot stay in Syria forever, and much depends on the policies of the US president. Moreover, the US military presence is rather small, but the dangers of confrontations with Russia are clearlypresent.
The Turkish military presence in Idlib is mainly intended to prevent a new stream of Syrian refugees into Turkey, and to curb the activities of radical terrorist Islamist organizations, like Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, and preventing them from having any influence or effect on terrorism inside Turkey. Perhaps Turkey still aims at regime change in Damascus, although it may have realized by now that its efforts have failed in this respect. In fact, the strengthened position of organizations like the PYD/YPG, HTS and others is to some extent an indirect result of Turkish interference in the war in Syria on the side of various opposition groups, and their failed efforts to topple the regime. * AMBASSADOR, WHAT IS YOUR READING OF THE “CAESAR ACT”, WHICH CAME INTO EFFECT ON JUNE 17TH, IN TERMS OF ITS ABILITY TO OVERTHROW BASHAR AL-ASSAD’S REGIME ON THE ONE HAND, AND ON THE OTHER HAND, IN TERMS OF DEEPENING THE SUFFERING OF THE SYRIAN PEOPLE, WHICH MEANS FACING BRUTAL DIFFICULTIES FOR NEARLY A DECADE, AS A RESULT OF THE ONGOING WAR THROUGHOUT SYRIA? The Caesar Law may bring some feelings of justice to the Syrians who have suffered under the regime, but I don’t believe that it will help in having the regime’s behavior being changed. The accompanying sanctions may bring some moral satisfaction to many Syrian refugees abroad, but it will not lead to the disappearance of the Syrian regime. The Syrian regime elite will not directly suffer from the sanctions, because it will maintain all the privileges it already has, but the population will be the indirect victim. The Syrian regime will, in my opinion, never be able to satisfy the American demands for “changing its behavior” except by stepping down, which is notgoing to happen.
More often than not there is a fixation on the position of president Bashar al-Asad, in the sense that if only he were to disappear, a real solution to the conflict would be at hand. The president, indeed, formally has a lot of authority, but it is not only he who decides what happens. Asad’s position is not like that described in the saying which is popularly ascribed to king Louis the 14th of France (1638 – 1715): _l’État c’est moi_ (“I am the state”). If, purely theoretically, Asad would leave, there would still be the thousands of key military figures, and intelligence people who can take the law into their own hands, leaving a situation in which the same regime would in fact still be there without Bashar Asad, at least as long as they would remain unified, whether or not behind a new “figure head president”. Therefore, one should take into account that the effects of president Asad resigning, generally are unrealistically portrayed as being much simpler than they really are. And one should also take into account what would happen if the regime succumbs due to the increasingly deteriorating economic situation in the country. Even if Russia and Iran would, purely theoretically, allow the Syrian military opposition groups to overrun the regime and bring its downfall, one should not expect “paradise” to break out. It is very unlikely that the more than 1000 military opposition groups would suddenly unite and make a run for parliament in order to have free elections and create a new peaceful and democratic Syria. They can be expected to engage in a power struggle among themselves until one group, or a coalition of groups, will monopolize power, and establish yet another authoritarian regime. This would mean a continuation of the bloody war. A new regime would be confronted with the same disastrous situation of a Syria in ruins. Even if all building materials and finances would be available, reconstruction of the country could take tens of years, because there should also be enough construction workers to carry it out. * DOES SECTARIANISM IN SYRIA -OR “ASABIYA”AS YOUR EXCELLENCY CONSIDERS IT- STAND AS AN OBSTACLE AGAINST SEEKING TO BUILD THE FUTURE OF A NEW SYRIA? AND FIRST OF ALL, WHAT WAS THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE ASSAD REGIME AND THE BA’ATH PARTY IN ESTABLISHING THIS GREATDILEMMA?
The Ba’th ideology strongly rejects sectarianism, regionalism and tribalism as old residues of society. In practice, however, the Ba’thist military were able to consolidate their power by exactly those principles which they rejected ideologically. There certainly was a lot of favoritism towards Alawi, tribal or regional friends ofthose in power.
This was a kind of sectarianism or ‘asabiya within the regime’s power instruments, like the army and security services (Mukhabarat). During the war which started after the beginning of the Syrian Revolution in 2011, the regime was able to maintain its position and survive, also because of this ‘asabiya, and sticking together among the regime’s elite. That does not mean, however, that this should prevent the building up of a new Syria, at least if there would be a new regime which is not dependent to the same extent on tribalism, regionalism and ‘asabiya, and the clientelism derived from it. Such a regime would thereby provide an example to Syrian society that things can be dealt with differently. One of the obstacles in this respect would be, however, that there should be reliable, more neutral armed forces and power institutions to guarantee such a neutrality. Creating such new power instruments will be extremely difficult, as loyalties within the Syrian armed forces have often depended on such primordial loyalties. One should make another distinction: the dependence of the power structure of the regime on sectarian, regional, tribal and ‘asabiya loyalties, does not mean that Syrian society in general is the same. Neither does it mean that the war in Syria is a sectarian war, even though some stages have had some sectarian dimensions. Of course, the same sectarian elements are present in the social fabric of Syrian society, but there are many more factors which are relevant in existing identities. * DO YOU THINK THAT SYRIA WILL LIVE IN A CRISIS OF IDENTITY AND COEXISTENCE IN THE POST-WAR PERIOD, AFTER ALL THE DESTRUCTION AND SABOTAGE THAT HAS BEFALLEN ON IT? Although it may sound contradictory, the war in Syria may in the end indirectly well have contributed to strengthening the Syrian national identity, instead of weakening it. The war is to a great extent about who will be in power within the framework of the Syrian state. Nevertheless, there are still many Syrians who give priority to their Arab and Islamic or other identities, whereas many Kurds, for instance, are doing something similar by giving priority to their Kurdish identity, some within the framework of a “Greater Kurdistan” which would be the counterpart of the “Arab Homeland”. Within this framework, the request is made by some parties to drop the word “Arab” from the present official name of the “Syrian Arab Republic”. The shorter name would be more neutral, as it does not distinguish between Kurds and Arabs (like in de official name of the Republic of Iraq). Dropping the word Arab would be difficult for those who are still convinced that Damascus should be seen as “the beating heart of Arabism”. The Syrian identity should supersede religious and ethnic identities, and this may take a long time to be realized. Accepting a change in the name of the Syrian state does not in itself mean that Syrians would really have changed their attitudes, but it would reflect their willingness to do so in the future. * HOW DO YOU SEE THE PROSPECTS AND FUTURE OF THE KURDISH QUESTION IN THE CONTEXT OF A SYRIAN SOLUTION WHICH WOULD HAVE TO BE ACCEPTED BY ALL COMPONENTS OF SYRIAN SOCIETY? A solution to the Kurdish question should inevitably be achieved. In particular, there should be freedom of expressing the Kurdish identity, including its language. The Syrian national identity should however, in my opinion, officially supersede other identities, be it the Arab, Kurdish or other identities. Otherwise, it will be not that easy to realize a Syria in which all citizens can be considered as equals. If the area inhabited by a Kurdish majority would have been rather homogeneous and large, like in northern Iraq, it would be easier to recognize an area with a kind of Kurdish autonomy. In reality, however, there are only three enclaves in northern Syria, where Kurds constitute a majority: Kobani, Ifrin and upper Jazira. Therefore, a similar construction as in northern Iraq, appears to beunfeasible.
We have seen that the Kurdish PYD/YPG has had seemingly contradictory alliances with different sides: with the Syrian regime, with the United States, occasionally also with the Free Syrian Army, but more often against it. One element has remained the same, however: they want to achieve Kurdish autonomy, and in this respect, they do not really care with whom they have an alliance, as long as this helps them in achieving their main aim. The countries that presently support the PYD/YPG, do so mainly for strategic reasons, which does not mean that they also support their ideas. * AT LAST, THROUGH YOUR EXPERIENCE, YOUR LONG DIPLOMATIC CAREER AND THE ROLE THAT YOU PLAYED IN SYRIA, DO YOU SEE THAT WE HAVE IN THIS COUNTRY A NATIONAL PROJECT THAT BRINGS TOGETHER ALL SYRIANS, AFTER BASHAR AL-ASSAD’S DEPARTURE AND THE END OF ALL FORMS OF OCCUPATION AND FOREIGN PRESENCES ON SYRIAN SOIL? Of course, there is such a possibility. All depends on the Syrians themselves and on a united military to protecting it and bringing itabout.
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Categories: Uncategorized SHOULD THE US HASTEN ASSAD’S DOWNFALL DESPITE SYRIA’S ABSENCE OFOPPOSITION LEADERS?
POSTED BY JOSHUA ON WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 14TH, 2020 I wrote this post on 5 August 2011, but never finished or posted it. I have just found it in my “drafts” and thought it worth publishing as a retrospective of the deep disagreement among analysts over US policy toward Syria during the first year of the Syrian Uprising. (Joshua 14 Oct. 2020) SHOULD THE US HASTEN ASSAD’S DOWNFALL DESPITE SYRIA’S ABSENCE OFOPPOSITION LEADERS?
By Joshua Landis
Syria Comment, August 5, 2011 Rami Nakhle in Lebanon THE LACK OF A UNITED LEADERSHIP Syria’s opposition does not have leaders. Rami Nakhle, a spokesman for the Local Coordination Committees, the most well known of the groups opposing the regime, told Deb Amos of NPR,
“there is no national leadership, even behind the scenes.” This is a virtue and intentional he explains, “we are doing our best not really to have leaders.” Why? Because “the Syrian regime has targeted anyone who is seen as an organizer of the protests.” That is the practical reason. A second reason is that Syrians don’t want leaders – “Everybody really feels anger towards leadership and authority on them,” saysNakhle.
Wissam Tarif reassures us that a new leadership for Syria will eventually emerge. It will emerge out of battle. It will emerge from the street. He explains, “There is an internal process, a process that is taking place in the street, which we will have to wait to see what happens there,” he said. “No one can control that. The real show is taking place on the ground with the protesters. And they will decide. No one else.” HOW DOES SYRIA’S LACK OF LEADERS COMPLICATE US PLANNING? The Syrian opposition’s lack of leaders has many US policy makers scared. They don’t want to bring down the regime before there is some structure or leadership to take its place. Syria’s silent majority is worried about a power vacuum developing in Syria as well. Who wants chaos? Iraq is fresh in everyone’s minds, not least of all in American policy planners’ minds. The quick toppling of the Iraqi regime brought militias and civil war. Much of Iraq that Saddam had failed to destroy was brought down by the waring militias and criminal gangs that took the army’s place. Most devastating, was the flight of Iraq’s upper and middle classes. Because of this fear, a number of US think tankers, most recently Michael S. Doran and Salman Shaikh of the Saban Center at Brookings, are trying to think their way around the dangers. In an article, entitled Getting Serious in Syria,they
argue that the US must play a leadership role in hastening the downfall of the Syrian regime. To avoid chaos and a vacuum they council the US to train, unit, and shape the Syrian opposition. It should also preserve the army. They don’t want an Iraq redux. The main body of the article is quite smart and nails a number of regime characteristics. It is the recommendations that give pause. The main shortcoming of the article is that it skips any discussion of the opposition’s lack of leadership. They are convinced that the sort of regime-led dialogue that Patrick Seale recommend s is fruitless. In this, they are so far correct. But they tip-toe around Seale’s central concern, that Syrians are divided. Without unity, Syria is likely to end up like Iraq and not Egypt. Seale cautions, “a sectarian civil war on the Iraqi or Lebanese model is every Syrian’s nightmare. There must surely be another way out of the crisis.” He councils dialogue because he despairs of unity emerging among Syria’s nascent opposition anytime soon. In his two magisterial works, Seale catalogs the history of Syrian divisiveness and factionalism in the 20th century. Perhaps this is why he shares little of the sunny optimism expressed by Doran and Shaykh about coordinating Syria’s opposition. He writes: > If the regime has shown itself to be weak, the opposition is weaker > still. It wants to challenge the system, but it evidently does not > know how to proceed. It is split in a dozen ways between > secularists, civil rights activists, democrats — and Islamists; > between angry unemployed youths in the street and venerable figures > of the opposition, hallowed by years in prison; between the > opposition in Syria and the exiles abroad; between those who call > for western intervention and those who reject any form of foreign> interference.
Doran and Shaikh dismiss Seale’s caution and ignore Syria’s leaderlessness. This permits them to advocate speeding up regime-change. They explain that in order to save lives and ensure “the speediest rise of a new order hospitable to the United States,” the US should organize a “contact group” of friendly nations which will help in shaping the environment such that a power vacuum does not emerge in Syria when the regime falls. They advise that “The contact group should take all available steps to starve the regime of cash and other resources, including taking a leadership role on preventing the regime from generating revenue from oil exports.” On economic sanctions, they follow the Tablerand
Monajed plan.
Their addition is the notion of an official “contact group” and that idea that the US can help form a transitional government out of Syria’s divisive opposition activists. > The United States must work with other key actors to help turn the > Syrian opposition into the nucleus of a transition government. As > the experience with the Libyan opposition forces has shown, > engagement with the Syrian opposition movement would prove > invaluable to increase its effectiveness and professionalize its> efforts.
As for the Syrian Army, they write: > The United States must promote defections from the Syrian security > services with an eye both to convincing Assad to leave and to > preserving the Syrian Armed Forces as a future national institution. > In doing so, Washington must warn officers, down to the brigade > level, that they are being monitored and that they will be held > personally accountable for the atrocities that are committed under > their command. (This should not be a bluff.) Can the US do this? Has it learned enough from its nation-building efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq to make the third time a charm? Or should the US pay heed to Wissam Tarif’s warning that the formation of an opposition leadership is an “internal process” that “noone can control?”
Randa Slim proposes a Doran lite sanctions scenario, aimed at convincing Syria’s business elite to dump Assad and embrace the revolution. In an article, entitled, “Where’s Syria’s businesscommunity?
”
She insists that Turkey must lead. The US is too tainted to assume dominance in the “contact group.” A close relationship with the Washington will delegitimize Syria’s opposition leaders in the eyes of Syrians. The US and the West in general, she cautions, must leave a “lighter footprint.” Slim is clear about one thing. Disunity among the opposition could doom the desire for regime-change. The absence of an opposition leadership is the major stumbling block preventing the Syrian business elite from ditching the Assads, she argues. The key to success for the revolution is getting Aleppo and Damascus to rise up with the people of Deraa and Jisr ash-Shaghour. SYRIA’S SUNNI CAPITALISTS Syrian businessmen are a conservative and self-interested lot. They have a refined disdain for peasants and tribesmen alike; neither are they big on leftists, philosophers, religious fanatics, or zealots of any stripe. Indeed, Syria’s merchants and capitalists have rather high regard for themselves and few others. In their eyes, they are the true guardians of the Syrian nation. Their wisdom and moderation guided Syria to independence in the 1940s, avoiding sectarian bloodletting or humiliating foreign treaties. They bore with the Baathist mishandling of the economy, and spurned the Brotherhoods’ Jihadist pretensions in the 1980s. The only wisdom of the Assads, according to the Sunni elite, was their willingness to temper the nationalizations of the Nasserists, cut short the communism of the Jadidists, and most importantly take Syria’s capitalists seriously. Before they will help overthrow the Assads, they need a safe alternative. They are not going to embrace, not to mention, fund a leaderless bunch of young activists who want to smash everything that smells of Baathist privilege, corruption and cronyism. After all, who are the CEOs of Syria’s crony capitalism if not the business elites of Aleppo and Damascus? Only a five weeks ago, the head of Aleppo’s Chamber of Commerce, Faris Al-Shihabi, decried the return of socialist and communist ideas among the opposition. He warned: > We do not want this opposition to be molded by the left, which will > be accompanied by lectures, theorizing and calamity for society and > the economy. Steps to bring about reconciliation must be taken with > the other sectors of civil society, particularly with national > capital. “لا نريد لهذه المعارضة أن تكون > لها الصبغة اليسارية، التي تأتي > بالتنظير والفلسفة والكوارث على > المجتمع واقتصاده، ولا بد من إجراء > المصالحة الداخلية مع القوى المدنية > الأخرى وخصوصاً قوى رأس المال> الوطني”.
Syria’s capitalists are not suicidal. They fear having their property expropriated twice in 50 years. Furthermore, they have become inextricably linked with the regime over the last 40 years, according to a number of analysts . > U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is correct in pointing out > that change is up to the Syrians, and that the Syrian opposition > must start laying out a credible transitional plan. The traditional > Syrian business community must be convinced that there is a credible > and viable political alternative to Assad. All they see now is an > opposition that is either too old and disorganized and has tried to > effect change and failed in the past or an opposition that is too > young in the form of the Local Coordinating Committees whose faces > and names are unknown to most and who are organizing and documenting > the street protests. Different opposition groupings including the > National Democratic Grouping, the Damascus Declaration signatories, > the National Salvation Council, and the local Coordinating Committee > have declared themselves, solidifying the image among this community > of a disjointed opposition.>
> The formation of a transitional political council composed of the > different groups now making up the Syrian opposition, Islamists and > secular, old and young, groups based in Syria and exiles, will go a > long way in promoting a shift in the Syrian businessman’s > calculus. This council should elect a leadership, outline a detailed > transition plan, and spell out a clear vision about the new social > contract for how they want Syrians to live together and the type of > economic system they want to see established. The lighter the > footprint the international community has in this process, the more > credible the outcome will be to the majority of Syrians and > especially to the traditional merchant class, a nationalistic group > that is suspicious of foreign, and especially U.S., intervention. > There are many skilled Syrian political scientists, lawyers, and > economists to do this job well without any outside assistance. Fast-forwarding the Revolution may create a Frankenstein Perhaps the US would be wiser to allow Syria to fill its own power vacuum? Once a united leadership emerges in Syria, it will be able to win the confidence of the majority and topple the regime on its own. There are dangers to short-circuiting that painful process. Doran and Shaikh argue that the US should hasten both the destruction of the old regime and construction of a new one – in short that it can nation build and help guide the emergence of a new Syria. This will save Syrian lives, they project, because it will prevent a drawn outbattle.
But by helping to “fast forward” the Syrian revolution, the US could be creating a Frankenstein. If the opposition doesn’t have time to produce a leadership that emerges organically out of struggle, Syria may never unite. The US may cause more destruction and death, not less. To be truly success the opposition must come together under one set of leaders who win the confidence of the people by their intelligence, canniness, and most importantly, by their success. SYRIAN MUST WIN THE REVOLUTION ON ITS OWN As Haytham al-Maleh, the dean of Syria’s opposition leaders, said in urging Syrians to eschew foreign intervention: “If we want to own Syria after the revolution, we must win this struggle on our own.”____
END LANDIS ANALYSIS
NEWS ROUND UP
ALAIN GRESH, DIRECTOR OF LE MONDE DIPLOMATIQUE RETURNS FROM HAMA HE PROVIDES A VIDEO OF HIS OBSERVATIONS COPIED BELOW(in french) link
Interview Summary: Syrian no longer fear. They are expressing themselves. They see the regime’s deceptions. There is no going back to what was. Assad cannot beat this. Either there will be deep and meaningful reform or a long bloody war that may go on for months and months and take on a nasty sectarian aspect. Very interesting video of a tribal meeting in Deir Ez-Zor, where several speakers support Jihad against the Army. Speakers agree that the regime does not know the meaning of peace or dialogue. They ask to coordinate with other cities, collect money from the cities and countryside, and to take the fight to the regime. Lots of old timereligion.
Syrian Uprising Expands Despite Absence Of Leaders Wednesday, August 03, 2011 NPR By Deborah Amos > Syria’s uprising has been called the YouTube Revolution. The > protest videos from cities across the country are a guide to how the> movement works.
>
> The banners and the slogans are remarkably similar, from the city of > Dera’a in the south, to Hama on the central plain, to the eastern > desert town of Deir Ezzor. Even in the capital of Damascus, the > chants are the same: “It’s time for President Bashar al-Assad to> go.”
>
> Yet there are no leaders directing the chants at these rallies. > There is no national leadership, even behind the scenes, says Rami > Nakhle, a spokesman for the Local Coordination Committees, the LCC, > the most well known of the groups opposing the regime.>
> “Actually, we are doing our best not really to have leaders, > because the classic leadership concept is really not working with > this uprising,” said Nakhle, who is operating from Beirut in > neighboring Lebanon.>
> The reasons are practical. The Syrian regime has targeted anyone who > is seen as an organizer of the protests.>
> “If we name them, we are really putting them in grave danger,”> said Nakhle.
>
> But there is something even stronger at work, said Nakhle. This > Syrian generation has grown up under an authoritarian system and > distrusts any kind of leadership.>
> “If some leader or some person starts to behave as a leader, the > crowd will knock him down,” he said. “Everybody really feels > anger towards leadership and authority on them.”>
> The result is an uprising that appears improvised, locally based, > and driven by young activists who are backed by large numbers of> angry citizens.
>
> “We don’t need anyone. It’s our freedom and we have to fight > for it. We are not afraid,” said Mohammed Ali, an activist in > Damascus who connects with other activists through Facebook.>
> Another Damascus-based activist, Amer Sadeq, uses an assumed name, > and communicates in code on Internet sites. “You cannot trust > anybody,” he said. “If you trust anybody and he makes a mistake, > then you are detained, that means almost certain possibility that > you will be tortured.”>
> While the groups in different cities are in touch through Internet > chat sites, they can take a week to decide on the Friday slogan and > tend to coordinate little else. They agree on ousting the Assad > regime, but so far, there is no grand structure or strategy beyond > keeping up the pressure on the street.>
> “It is a strategy,” says Rami Nakhle, “making it look to > (President) Bashar al Assad that every day is worse than that day > before and to keep pushing until something cracks.”>
> But as the international community distances itself from the Assad > regime, one question has become more urgent: Who is the opposition > and can get their act together?>
> “I think the international community wants a list, a list of 20 > people whom they can check their background, and then they can talk > with,” said Wissam Tarif, head of a Syrian human rights monitoring > group. “Well, there is no list and there will not be a list.”>
> Political organizing is new for Syria, especially under an > autocratic system that prohibits any meetings not sanctioned by> regime.
>
> “There is an internal process, a process that is taking place in > the street, which we will have to wait to see what happens there,” > he said. “No one can control that. The real show is taking place > on the ground with the protesters. And they will decide. No one> else.”
>
> Still, some activists feel they need a transition plan that answers > the crucial question: What next?>
> At a meeting in Beirut, Nakhle, one of the founders of the LCC, > opens his laptop and explains a complex chart that he’s been > working on for weeks. Every city has what he calls a central > committee. There is an LCC parliament, and a list of “advisers.” > For the first time, the grassroots movement is reaching out to > Syria’s older generation of dissidents for help to map out a > transition plan should the Assad regime fall.>
> It may look great on the screen, but Nakhle admits that less than > half of it is actually in place.>
> “Today we are … playing with politics, we need to be more > mature,” he said.>
> But the Syrian government is not playing at repression. And the > protest movement may need to mature quickly in a country where the > violence is growing greater by the day. In Syria, Live Fire and Dueling Narratives By J. DAVID GOODMAN, August 5, 2011 > After seeking to impose a communications blackout on the besieged > city of Hama, Syrian state television aired its own footage of > rubble-strewn and deserted streets as evidence, it said, of a > campaign to restore “normal life.”>
> BBC compiled video clips from the state news report, which described > the images as new….>
> a Swiss radio journalist, Gaëtan Vannay, spent ten days in the > city, managing to escape during the military onslaught sometime > early this week.>
> He reported that before the tanks and troops moved in, the city was > calm, calling government claims that the city had been overtaken by > violent chaos “pure propaganda.”>
> “I did not hear any gunshots before the morning of the arrival of > the government forces,” Mr. Vannay said in his report. He also > confirmed that in general the video reports by activists in the city > were an accurate representation of what was going on there…. Russia warns Syrian ruler he may face `sad fate’ VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV – 8/4/2011 7:08:38 > Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Thursday he has warned > Syria’s ruler that he will face a “sad fate” if he fails to > introduce reforms in his country and open a peaceful dialogue with> the opposition.
>
> In remarks carried by Russian news agencies, Medvedev said he has > delivered this message to Syrian President Bashar Assad.>
> An offensive by Syrian forces against anti-government dissent in the > city of Hama, backed by tanks and snipers, has killed scores of > people since Sunday.>
> “Regrettably, large numbers of people are dying there. That causes > us grave concern,” Medvedev was quoted as saying.>
> “That’s why both on a personal level and in the letters I sent > to him (Assad) I have emphasized that it’s necessary to urgently > conduct reforms, negotiate with the opposition, restore civil peace, > and create a modern state.”>
> “If he fails to do that, he will face a sad fate. And in the end > we will also have to make some decisions. We are watching how the > situation is developing. It’s changing, and our approach is > changing as well.” Economist: Bloodier Still > AT DAWN on the eve of Ramadan, the month of fasting that began on > August 1st, President Bashar Assad sent tanks into Hama, the > fourth-biggest city in the country. They fired at buildings from at > least four directions. Soldiers and security forces with automatic > rifles mowed down protesters carrying iron bars and rocks. They cut > off electricity and communications. Amateur video footage showed > columns of black smoke rising from the city of 800,000 as gunfire > reverberated in the background. Pictures displayed mangled bodies, > including one of a man run over by a tank. At least 100 civilians > are reported to have been killed since the assault began.>
> It was the bloodiest episode since Syrians rose up five months ago. > Since then, at least 2,000 people are reckoned to have been killed > across the country, including 300 or so members of the security > forces, some of whom were shot for defecting. At least 12,000 > protesters are behind bars. The unrest shows no sign of dying down. > Yet no one can say for sure how it will end.>
> Hama is not alone. The army and security forces have locked down > Homs, the country’s third-biggest city, and Deir ez-Zor in the > east, its fifth-biggest. Deraa, in the south, where the uprising > began, is still under siege. Protests, albeit generally not on a big > scale, continue to erupt in Damascus, including central districts > such as Midan, just south of the old city, and in most of the > surrounding suburbs and villages. Of Syria’s big cities, only > Aleppo has been relatively quiet. Influential merchants there are > watching and waiting.>
> The regime now seems determined to crush the street protests at all > costs, while rallying support among its most loyal constituents: the > Alawite minority of 10% to which Mr Assad belongs; the Christians > (another 10%); the army; and the business class of Damascus and > Aleppo, which has done quite well out of the Assad regime.>
> Western and Arab governments have plainly failed to persuade Mr > Assad to change his ways or open meaningful talks with the > protesters, though he held a fruitless “dialogue” which no > genuine opposition figures attended. The Russians have altered their > tone since the assault on Hama, calling Mr Assad’s use of force > “unacceptable”. The European Union has increased the number of > Syrians under sanctions. Turkey, a vital trading partner, has been > increasingly critical. President Barack Obama is expected to call > for Mr Assad to step down. Italy withdrew its ambassador. The UN > Security Council finally issued a “presidential statement” which > condemned the Syrian regime. All such gestures have so far been in> vain.
>
> Use the interactive “carousel” to browse all our coverage of > Middle Eastern unrest through graphics>
> International options are limited. No one is seriously recommending > military intervention. Arab governments have generally been silent, > though the Saudis are keen to get rid of Mr Assad, since he is the > closest Arab ally of Iran, whose power the Gulf Arabs would like to > trim. The Americans want to boost the Syrian opposition, some of > whose members recently met Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, > in Washington, DC. Economic sanctions may start to bite, but there > is no hint yet that the regime is running short of cash to pay the > army and security forces.>
> Some protesters say they should resort to violence. In towns such as > Tel Kalakh, Jisr al-Shughour, Idleb and Deir ez-Zor, which are near > the border, weapons are being smuggled in. But rifles and Molotov > cocktails are no match for tanks and artillery. Other protesters > hope that, if the regime becomes even more brutal, chunks of the > army may defect, as they did in Libya. But so far the Alawite-led > army, with its array of privileges, has remained loyal to the > defiant Mr Assad.AMBASSADOR FORD
> Fox:
> This
> week, when our ambassador to Syria dutifully responded as summoned > to a hearing, only one senator bothered to show up. Kuwait calls for dialogue to end Syrian crisis2011-08-05
> KUWAIT CITY, Aug. 5 (Xinhua) — Kuwait on Friday called for > dialogue and political solution to end the crisis in Syria as Russia > said NATO was planning a military campaign against Syria.>
> “Kuwait voiced sorrow for the continued bloodshed among citizens > of the brotherly Syrian people”, a statement carried by the > official KUNA news agency said.>
> The Foreign Ministry statement urged dialogue and political > settlement to achieve a practical, political solution that could > meet the aspirations of the Syrian people.>
> Lawmakers in the Gulf emirate have called on the Kuwaiti government > to condemn the alleged crackdown and expel the Syrian ambassador.>
> The UN Security Council Wednesday adopted a presidential statement > condemning the Syrian authority’s use of force against civilians > and urged all parties to stop the violence.>
> Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Thursday endorsed the > multi-party and general election laws, as part of reforms announced > by him of late to meet the Syrian people’s demands. UN Security Council Condemns Syrian Violence > ….The U.N.’s most powerful body expressed “grave concern” at > the deteriorating situation in Syria, …It was not easy for the > Council to reach consensus.>
> The United States and European members had pressed for a resolution, > which is stronger than the presidential statement that was adopted. > But their efforts were blocked by Russia, China, India, Brazil and > South Africa, who feared a resolution could lead to a similar > situation as the one in Libya, where the Council authorized a no-fly > zone and targeted bombings to protect anti-government protesters > from attack by leader Moammar Gadhafi’s security forces….>
> In its statement, the Security Council condemned the “widespread > violations of human rights and the use of force against civilians by > the Syrian authorities.” The Council also called on the Syrian > authorities “to fully respect human rights and to comply with > their obligations under international law,” and warns that those > responsible for the violence should be held accountable.>
> The Security Council also demanded the immediate end to all violence > and urged restraint on both sides, including attacks against state > institutions – a reference to violence committed by demonstrators > and included to satisfy Russia and other members who felt blaming > the government alone was unfair. But Western diplomats have stressed > that one cannot equate what protesters have done in self-defense to > what the government has perpetrated against its own people.>
> The Council also stressed that the only solution to the crisis is > through an inclusive and Syrian-led political process that aims to > “address the legitimate aspirations and concerns” of the Syrian > people. And it notes that the Assad government has promised reforms, > but has failed to make progress in implementing them and urged the > government to fulfill its commitments.>
> But after the full council adopted the statement, Syria’s close > ally and neighbor, Lebanon, employed a rarely used procedural > loophole and “disassociated” itself from the statement…..>
> “Barbarous acts must cease in Syria,” said Lyall Grant. “The > country must find its way onto a path of stability. This will only > be achieved through the immediate cessation of violence and the > implementation without delay of profound political reforms, respect > of human rights and fundamental liberties, and genuine > accountability for atrocities against protesters.”>
> The United States and European members had pressed for a resolution, > which is stronger than the presidential statement that was adopted. > But their efforts were blocked by Russia, China, India, Brazil and > South Africa, who feared a resolution could lead to a similar > situation as the one in Libya, where the Council authorized a no-fly > zone and targeted bombings to protect anti-government protesters > from attack by leader Moammar Gadhafi’s security forces The Egyptian impasse raises a sobering question: whether a revolution can succeed without violence July 31, 2011|By Thanassis Cambanis > CAIRO – When Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak resigned after 18 > days of public demonstrations here last winter, Tahrir Square > instantly took its place in the world’s iconography of peaceful > protest. Young men and women brandishing nothing more lethal than > shoes and placards had toppled a dictator. One subversive slogan – > “The people want the fall of the regime” – in the mouths of a > million people overpowered a merciless police state.>
> It was not bloodless; some 846 people were killed by police and > regime thugs, according to an Egyptian government inquiry. But for > the protesters, and for people watching around the world, Egypt’s > uprising appeared a heartening entry in the history of successful > nonviolent movements stretching from Gandhi and Martin Luther King > to the “velvet revolutions” that unraveled the Iron Curtain in> 1989.
>
> That was half a year ago. Today, Mubarak’s military council runs > the country, wielding even more power than before when it had to > share authority with the president’s family and civilian inner > circle. The military has detained thousands of people after secret > trials, accused protesters of sedition, and issued only opaque > directives about the country’s path toward a constitution and a > new elected civilian government.>
> As time passes and revolutionary momentum fades in the broader > public, a new current of thought is arising among the protesters who > still occupy Tahrir Square, demanding civilian rule and > accountability for former regime figures. Many are now asking an > unsettling question: What if nonviolence isn’t the solution? What > if it’s the problem?>
> “We have not yet had a true revolution,” said Ayman Abouzaid, a > 25-year-old cardiologist who has taken part in every stage of the > revolution so far. At the start, Abouzaid wholeheartedly embraced > nonviolence, but now believes that only armed vigilante attacks will > force the regime to purge the secret police and other operatives who > still retain their jobs from the Mubarak era. “We need to take our > rights with our own hands,” he says…. Velvet Or Violent: What Makes A Successful Revolution?–
NPR – Hear and Now > Many have praised the non-violent protests that pushed Egyptian > Hosni Mubarak from power this year. But some activists in Cairo’s > Tahrir Square say the revolution hasn’t resulted in the democracy > they wanted, and violence may be needed.>
> Thanassis Cambanis writes in the Boston Globe: “Among the > dedicated core of Egyptian street activists who have been at the > forefront of the protests since the beginning, an increasing number > have begun to argue that a regime steeped in violence will only > respond to force.”> Guests:
>
> * Thanassis Cambanis, journalist and author of “A Privilege to > Die: Inside Hezbollah’s Legions and Their Endless War Against> Israel.”
> * Mahmoud Salem, blogger known as Sand Monkey NATO is planning military campaign against Syria: Russian envoy > MOSCOW, Aug. 5 (Xinhua) — Russia’s envoy to NATO, Dmitry > Rogozin, said Friday that the alliance is planning a military > campaign against Syria to overthrow the regime of Syrian President > Bashar al-Assad, local media reported……>
> Russia has learned lessons from Libya and will continue to oppose > “a forcible resolution of the situation in Syria,” Rogozin said. > He added that the alliance is aiming to interfere only with the > regimes “whose views do not coincide with those of the West.” > The diplomat also warned that the “noose around Iran is > tightening,” saying Moscow is seriously concerned about “an > escalation of a large-scale war in this huge region.” Syrian regime is doomed Aug 4, 2011 18:32 Moscow Time > Interview with Georgy Mirsky, chief research fellow at the Institute > of World Economy and International Relations at the Russian Academy> of Sciences:
>
> The regime is doomed, it is in deep crisis, and it is very difficult > to imagine that it will last for very long. Nevertheless, in a > short-term probably it will be able to cope with the situation, for > a while at least. It is the end of the regime, but the agony may > last for a certain period. So, the only way out is to continue to > prolong this bloodshed until somebody loses its nerve, it is a war> of nerves.
>
> Now, Bashar al-Assad is not a strong leader; maybe the opposition > reckons that sooner or later he will back down, but nobody knows > what is going to happen. As to the next United Nations resolution, > it is very strongly hardening on the sanctions, but how effective > will it be? For instance, now to prohibit Syrian officials from > going abroad is not very serious; economic sanctions in the matter > of time will bring very hard pressure on the Syrian government, but > it will take time.> end
also: Syria: Devil you know is better than devil you don’t Laaska News April 29,2011 > Georgy Mirsky, Chief Research Fellow at the Institute of World > Economy and International relations: > …Of course we do not know yet the final outcome of the events in > Syria. As to me, I would rather put my money on Bashar Assad.>
> I think he will drown the country in blood, but he will tough it > out, because you know it all depends on the decisiveness and the > brutality and ruthlessness of the armed forces, now you see the > revolution in Syria is much alike all the other revolutions in the > Arab world, it is part of one Arab revolution from the Atlantic > ocean to the Persian Gulf, which by the way they call the Arab> Gulf…..
Secretive Sect of the Rulers of Syria > 2011-08-05, Christopher Howse, Sacred Mysteries: the strange > religion of the Assad family…. It was the bloodiest episode since Syrians rose up five months ago. Since then, at least 2,000 people are reckoned to have been killed across the country, including 300 or so members of the security forces, some of whom were shot for defecting. At least 12,000 protesters are behind bars. The unrest shows no sign of dying down. Yet no one can say for sure how it will end.IN THIS SECTION
* »Bloodier still
* The new green
* Bad neighbours
* The rebel hiccup
* Street power
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* Government and politics * Peacekeeping and security* War and conflict
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Hama is not alone. The army and security forces have locked down Homs, the country’s third-biggest city, and Deir ez-Zor in the east, its fifth-biggest. Deraa, in the south, where the uprising began, is still under siege. Protests, albeit generally not on a big scale, continue to erupt in Damascus, including central districts such as Midan, just south of the old city, and in most of the surrounding suburbs and villages. Of Syria’s big cities, only Aleppo has been relatively quiet. Influential merchants there are watching and waiting.SHARE THIS:
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Syria Revolution 2011 THE POINTLESS CRUELTY OF TRUMP’S NEW SYRIA SANCTIONS POSTED BY JOSHUA ON MONDAY, AUGUST 17TH, 2020 _“COMPETING WITH ASSAD OVER WHO CAN HURT SYRIAN PEASANTS MORE IS A LOSING GAME FOR WASHINGTON.”_ BY JOSHUA LANDIS AND STEVEN SIMON Last December, U.S. President Donald Trump adopted extraordinarily tough and wide-ranging new sanctionsagainst
the Syrian government and its supporters. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and other senior officials have been subject to U.S. sanctions since 2011, but the new measures, which took effectin
mid-June, are sweeping: they apply to anyone, Syrian or non-Syrian, who aids or does business with the Assad regime or with any entitiesit controls.
The policy has earned praise in some quarters—compared to many Trump-era Middle East actions, it is at least coherent. But it fails to advance any core American interests. Moreover, it further immiserates the Syrian people, blocks reconstruction efforts, and strangles the economy that sustains a desperate population during Syria’s growing humanitarian and public healthcrises.
According to U.S. Special Representative for Syria James Jeffrey, the objectives of this scorched-earth policy are to turn Syria into a“quagmire
”
for Russia and to gain enough leverage to reconstitute the Syrian government along the lines that the United States imposed on Japan after World War II. The United States seeks a “dramatic shift” in the Syrian regime’s behavior, Jeffrey asserted:
in theory, systematically bankrupting the Syrian government could force Assad to comply with UN Security Council Resolution 2254,which requires
Syrian political
reform. To increase the pressure, the United States has endorsed Israeli strikes against Syrian territory and Turkish expropriation of Syrian energy resources. It has also closed the main highway to Baghdad to choke off trade. U.S. POLICY AND THE SYRIAN UPRISING In 2011, U.S. President Barack Obama and European leaders embarkedon
a crusade to force Assad from office. They presumed that a virtuous alternative government waited in the wings—but the Western-educated, Syrian opposition figures whom the United States and the European Union had cultivated turned out to hold no sway on the ground, and American-led attempts to unify the Syrian opposition failed. In 2012, the CIA counted more than 1,500 opposition militias in Syria. By the time Russia intervened in 2015, the United States and its European allies had begun to fear that these groups had lost control of the military effort against Assad to radical Islamist groups, such as the Islamic State (or ISIS) and al Qaeda. Washington’s new sanctions campaign presupposes that the quagmirethe
United States creates would somehow engulf Russia. For proponents of the policy—especially those who came of age in the Vietnam era—“quagmire” is a deeply resonant term, recalling a war that killed 58,000 Americans, shredded American credibility, and weakened the fabric of American society. But simply repeating thistalismanic term
will
not shift the United States’ historic quagmire onto Russia. Preserving Assad is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s greatest foreign policy success since the annexation of Crimea, and Russia can keep Syria’s strongman afloat without paying a fraction of the terrible price the United States paid in Vietnam. Moreover, the United States has nothing to gain by creating a quagmire for Russia; doing so won’t improve its strategic position in the region, save Syrian lives, or diminish the threat that Russia poses to Americandemocracy.
In the real world, “quagmire” is simply a misleading term for a failed state. And failed states leave their populations exposed to hunger, disease, poverty, and predatory warlords. The Trump administration skirts this grim reality by insisting that sanctions work. Yet there is little evidence that economic sanctions ever achieve their objectives. Even the best-designed sanctions can be self-defeating, strengthening the regimes they were designed to hurt and punishing the societies they were supposed to protect. The destruction of Iraq’s middle class in the 1990s is a case in point: U.S. sanctions killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Their effect was gendered, disproportionately punishing women and children. The notion that sanctions work is a pitiless illusion. The fact is those with guns eat first, and competing with Assad over who can hurt Syrian peasants more is a losing game for Washington. THE LOGIC OF SANCTIONS The Trump administration designed the sanctions it has now imposed on Syria to make reconstruction impossible. The sanctions target the construction, electricity, and oil sectors, which are essential to getting Syria back on its feet. Although the United States says it is “protecting” Syria’s oil fields in the northeast, it has not given the Syrian government access to repair them, and U.S. sanctions prohibit any firm of any nationality from repairing them—unless the administration wishes to make an exception. Such an exception was recently made for a U.S. firm to manage the oil fields, but oil leaks continue to drain into the Khabour and Euphrates Rivers. U.S. sanctions not only punish people, who receive only an hour or two of electricity a day, but also poison their environment. The sanctions even prevent non-U.S. aid organizations from delivering reconstruction assistance. Humanitarian exemptions are deliberately vague, as are the requirements that the Syrian government would have to meet in order to obtain sanctions relief. Such uncertainty is meant to deter aid suppliers and investors who might otherwise help Syria rebuild but who can’t be wholly confident that they are in the clear to do so. This chilling effect, known as overcompliance, is a rational response to the fear of inadvertent entanglement in complex legal issues that could destroy a nongovernmental organization or a firm. Blocked from reconstructing their country and seeking external assistance, Syrians face “mass starvation or another mass exodus,” according to the World Food Program. In 2011, abject poverty in Syria stood at less than one percent. By 2015, however, abject poverty had risen to 35 percent of the population. In late spring of 2020, Lebanon approached bankruptcy, and Syria’s economy, which has deep and long-standing tiesto
Lebanon’s economy, began to spin out of control. Food prices have shot up 209 percent in the last year, and medicine is expensive and scarce. The number of food insecure Syrians has climbed from 7.9 million to 9.3 million in just six months, according to the World FoodProgram.
To bring humanitarian and reconstruction aid into Syria would necessarily involve the country’s government, which is notoriously corrupt. But Saudi Arabia is corrupt as well: no one can do business there without paying an informal tax to members of the royal family. Those who deal with the governments of this region and who seek to help them avoid collapse must understand regime corruption as a regrettable but unavoidable added transaction cost. Opposition groups partake in the culture of corruption as well: Robert Ford, the former U.S. ambassador to Syria, pleaded to no avail with the country’s main opposition militias for the return of materiel they had looted from the warehouses of U.S.-supported factions. The U.S.-backed militias around Aleppo in turn looted more than 1,000 factories, stripping them to their cement foundations. Aid delivery therefore will entail repeated shoving matches between providers dedicated to channeling the full value of assistance to their intended recipients and a government determined to shovel it toward its supporters. This process will be exhausting and disappointing to both sides. But aidwill get through.
WHY SANCTIONS ARE UNLIKELY TO WORK Although Jeffrey has said that the United States no longer seeks regime change in Syria, many sanctions advocates within the Trump administration continue to hope for exactly that. They argue that the pain of ordinary Syrians today will pay off, because Assad’s departure will yield a future free from oppression and fear. Their opponents say that regime change will more likely unleash a second round of civil war following the collapse of the state and that Syria could well be plunged into anarchy for another decade. The problem for these sanctions advocates is that there isn’t evidence to support their counterfactual claim—that destroying the authoritarian state will improve human rights—and their opponents can point to the bloody chaos that regime change unleashed in Iraq and Libya. U.S. policymakers have suggestedthat
Assad and his backers will voluntarily embrace the UN’s path forward, adopting an “entirely new set of behaviors” in order to “come out from under these sanctions.” But the notion that Assad will freely accept the UN plan—which calls for fair elections, a new constitution, and “credible, inclusive and non-sectarian governance”—is disconnected from reality. In practice, doing so would mean Assad’s ouster, and he knows it. Assad and his supporters won the country’s civil war against considerable odds. They did not crack when rebels massacred their entire national security team early in the war; they did not crack when they lost Palmyra, Idlib, half of Aleppo, the oil fields, the northeast, or the southeast; they brushed off Trump’s 60-second bombing campaign; and they withstood an energetic U.S. effort to equip and train the armed opposition. If nine years of brutal violence that killed some 100,000 Alawites—one of every 25—did not defeat Assad and his military, economic embargoes are unlikely to faze him. The fact is that sanctions will achieve neither justice for Assad nor mercy for the Syrian people. The United States once led an international liberal order premised on the conviction that free trade and a vital middle class would produce democratic governance and societal well-being. Today, the Trump administration is trying to convince the world of the opposite—that impoverishment and the restriction of trade will bring freedom and advancement. The sooner the United States reconsiders its punitive policy toward Syria, the sooner it will be able to make a positive contribution to regional development. Assad is likely to agree to substantial concessions in order to get out from under sanctions, but stepping aside is not among them. JOSHUA LANDIS is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, Sandra Mackey Professor of Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma in the College of International Studies, and Director of the Center for Middle East Studies and the Farzaneh Family Center for Iranian and Persian Gulf Studies. STEVEN SIMON is a Research Analyst at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and Professor in the Practice of International Relations at Colby College. He served as Senior Director for Middle Eastern and North African Affairs at the White House from 2011 to 2012._Original here.
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Categories: Sanctions SYRIA AND FRANCE: THE BATTLE OF MAYSALUN, A HUNDRED YEARS ON POSTED BY CHRIS SOLOMON ON FRIDAY, JULY 24TH, 2020 By Christopher Solomon On July 24, 1920, French troops defeated Syrian forces at the Battle of Maysalun. One hundred years later, Paris and Damascus continue to struggle to chart the bilateral relations after decades of discord. It was a hundred years ago, on July 24, 1920, that French forces faced the Syrians on the battlefield of Maysalun. Franco-Syrian relations have a long and turbulent history. Some of the early origins of this relationship can be traced to the French military officer, François de Tott, who advised the Ottoman Empire in the 1760s, or Napoleon’s failed military expeditions to the Levant and Egypt in 1798. However, it is the modern era, in the aftermath of the First World War, when the League of Nations offered up the remnants of the Ottoman Empire to Britain and France – when Syrian-French relations truly began. To this day, Syrians celebrate Evacuation Day on April 17th to mark the departure of French military forces from their homeland in 1946. However, France retained a dash of influence with its former colony, which, along with Lebanon, offered it a gateway into the eastern Mediterranean. In addition, France is deeply woven into Syria’s political fabric and has long served as a place of exile for Syria’s revolving door of politicians who found themselves in and out of power, such as Akram al-Hawrani,
Abdul Halim Khaddam
,
Mustafa Tlass
,
and Rifaat al-Assad
.
A good deal of Syria’s security infrastructure was inherited from France, such as Tadmor Prison, a former colonial military barracks. France was also the birthplace of a modern political ideology that left a tremendous impact in the Levant. Baath Party founder Michel Aflaq was deeply read in the philosophy of Henri Bergson, found a home in the French communist movement, and met his intellectual colleague, Salah al-Din Bitar, at the Sorbonne in Paris. The Battle of Maysalun itself was in fact a loss for Syria, which had sought to shore up the short-lived Arab Kingdom of Syria, which Faisal I declared in 1920. Although the Syrians were defeated, battles often have a way of living on in the national psyche as a moment of valor and unity against a common foe. Maysalun was long lauded as a pivotal moment when Arab forces stood up to a Western power in the region. Despite this, the majority of Syrians today likely look at these anniversaries of pomp and patriotism with a healthy dose of disdain and cynicism given the extent of the horrors and humanitarian disasters stemming from the nearly decade-long conflict that has tragically enveloped their country. Regardless, France’s colonial legacy remains paramount in understanding Syria’s long unwavering stance on its sovereignty, territorial disputes, and uncompromising approach to negotiating away its political system in the international negotiations to end Syria’s bloody conflict. Syrian stamps marked the 50th anniversary of Evacuation Day in 1996. BATTLE OF MAYSALUN AND THE FRENCH MANDATE OF SYRIA Following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in World War I and the tentative creation of the Kingdom of Syria under Faisal, France and Syria subsequently embarked on the first clash of their long and tumultuous history. France sought to take hold of the Syrian territory it had gained in its secret deal with the United Kingdom. King Faisal, on the other hand, embarked on establishing an independent Arab Kingdom. This set off the collision course that would long haunt bilateral relations. Maysalun, Syria, present day The Franco-Syrian War that began in March of 1920 came to a conclusion only a few months later in July at the battle of Maysalun. Leading the Syrian troops was War Minister Yusuf al-Azma, a Syrian Turkmen from Damascus who served in the Ottoman military during WWI. There is some debate on whether Azma left the Ottoman ranks for the Arab Revolt or if he stayed until the war concluded in 1918. Prior to Maysalun, the Syrians themselves were intensely divided on how to respond to France’s diplomatic pressures and military advances. A section of the Syrian political and social elite viewed France as a positive influence in the country and necessary for economic and political growth. Another group despised France as a colonial power that needed to be shook off so Syria could chart its own destiny as an independent and sovereign nation. Azma created Syria’s first army from scratch and recruited citizen volunteers from around the country. As the French forces advance from the Beqaa Valley towards Damascus, Azma was determined to confront France on the battlefield. However, he became immortalized for his role in leading the Syrians against the French military forces at Maysalun. France brought in tanks and aircraft to counter the artillery and machine guns fielded by the Arab forces. The Tirailleurs Sénégalais, colonial soldiers from French West Africa, played a significant role in the battle on the French side and suffered heavy casualties. The Syrians were armed with antiquated rifles and were seriously short on ammunition. Nearly 400 Syrian troops fell at the battle. Azma himself died during the fighting from machine gun fired by a French tank. He was 36 years old. France then solidified its hold over Damascus and ruled Syria for thenext 25 years.
Yousef al-Azma’s tomb, 1924 Gen. Gouraud was installed as the High Commissioner to Syria and Lebanon and reviewed a military parade in front of the Grand Serail in Damascus the day after the battle ended. Whether he uttered the infamous phrase, “Saladin, we’re back!”
continues to be debated. The end of the conflict only momentarily quelled the violence. Five years later, in 1925, the Great Syrian Revolt erupted against French colonial rule and was brutally crushed. A group of captured Iraqi army officers who fought with Syria at Maysalun, released in 1921. Many of Syria’s national heroes that span all political stripes were products of this era. Ibrahim Hananu, a political figure from a wealthy land-owning family, led fierce anti-French resistance efforts in northern Syria in 1920 and again in 1925. In October 1925,
France’s High Commissioner Maurice Sarrail’s forces shelled Damascus to push out the Syrian rebels. Following the widespread condemnation, he was recalled back to Paris. The famous Druze leader Sultan Atrash, Fawzi al-Qawukji, and Abdul Rahman Shahbander were among the other prominent Syrian rebel leaders that took part in the anti-French revolts. There is currently a statue for Yousef Al-Azma in one of the larger squares in Damascus in Al-Salihiyah, and his home in Muhajreen is now a museum. Sami Moubayed, a Syrian historian specialized in the pre-Baathist era, explained, “The battle of Maysalun is the one event in modern Syrian history that has not been subjected to any polarization and remains an event for all Syrians. There is no such consensus with events like March 8th, for example (the date of the Baathist takeover) or April 7th, being the birth date of the Baath Party. The battle of Maysalun took place exactly 100-years ago and every single government since then has celebrated the event with plenty of homage to its hero,Yousef al-Azma.”
A group commemorating Maysalun in the 1930s. Moubayed noted that some Syrian Francophiles skipped the battle’s anniversary in order to avoid offending their French patrons during the ensuing Mandate years. He also explained that it became “heretical” to skip the battle’s annual commemoration but said the first president to skip Maysalun was Egyptian leader Gamal Abdul Nasser while he reigned over Syria during the United Arab Republic (1958-1961). “Perhaps this was intended to drum up Arab nationalism, at the expense of Syrian nationalism. His right-hand-man, Marshal Abdul Hakim Amer, who handled Syrian affairs, was actually opposed to the creation of a new statue for Yousef al-Azma, saying that the one in Yousef al-Azma Square was enough,” Moubayed explained. However, for some Syrians of the new generation, the anniversary is nothing but a minor historical footnote. Syria expert Ruwan Al-Rejoleh said, “It is not considered as a national or official occasion. It is not an official holiday.” She said that students learned about the battle briefly in history classes as part of Syria’s history to fight French colonialism but today there was nothing significant on the national level. “It was just a battle and honoring Yousef al-Azma in a respectful way, but not with so much emphasis on him,”she noted.
Maysalun also slammed the final nail into the coffin of the post-WWI promises of Arab self-determination and independence. After siding with the British and French to defeat the Ottoman Empire, President Woodrow Wilson pushed his idealistic Fourteen Points peace principles and vision of an international community of nations, which the US allies derisively rebuffed. The League of Nations itself failed largely due to U.S. domestic politics. France did its own part to inflict lasting territorial changes on Syria, transferring Hatay to Turkey in 1939 after a referendum. Baathist thinker Zaki al-Arsuzi, later on idolized by Hafez al-Assad, was a prominent voice against the Turkish annexation. How Syria’s history could have turned out if the Syrians had been able to field a larger and better armed force and routed the French at Maysalun would make for interesting scenario. Would Faisal have held onto his nascent Hashemite kingdom? Would Syria have been doomed to its long running cycle of coups and dictatorships? If he had survived, could a triumphant Azma have gone on to become his own Syrian military strongman? This will perhaps never be certain and the ramifications of France’s colonial history in Syria played out in its immediate post-independence years. The relations between Paris and Damascus ran hot and cold. However, Maysalun continued to remain a divisive issueamong Syrians.
Dr. Joshua Landis explained, “At Independence in 1946, the different parties fought over its symbolism. President Shukri al-Quwatli downplayed its importance and didn’t include a separate parade for the heroes of Maysalun in the April 17, 1946 pageantry since it was connected to the Hashemite tradition. The pro-Hashemites, many of whom supported King Abdullah of Jordan or the Iraqi Hashemites, were furious. They thought Quwatli was suppressing an important chapter in Syria’s heritage and sidelining the real pioneers of Syrian independence in order to highlight his own, Johnny come lately, role in Syria’s independence.” As the Syrian independence train began its slow chug uphill, the newborn country was struck by three military coups, all in the year 1949. The first coup leader was a French-trained officer, Husni Za’im. After his downfall and execution, Sami al-Hinnawi took power before being tossed out at the end of the year by Adib Shishakli for attempting to swing Syria over to British-backed Iraq. French President Vincent Auriol, a socialist, came to power in the French Fourth Republic and oversaw a dramatic decline in its Paris’ influence throughout its colonial possessions. However, he struck a friendly tone with Shishakli. Following the fall of the Shishakli dictatorship in 1954, Syria was undergoing rapid political changes and lurched towards the Soviet Union. Shortly after the 1956 Suez Crisis, in which France, Israel, and the United Kingdom launched a military intervention against Egypt, Nasser became the bête noire of the Western powers. Meanwhile, Damascus sought to avert its own crisis. In December 1956, the Syrians and Soviets took to the United Nations to warn of impending danger from the United Kingdom, Israel, Turkey, and France. UN diplomats viewed the Syrian theater as having the potential for a greater escalation than the Suez Crisis. However, it was not until the Baath Party took control in 1963 and the arrival of Syrian Air Force commander Hafez al-Assad, who took power in 1970, that France truly felt Syria drift from a former colonial play thing to a dangerous diplomatic dance partner. THE HAFEZ AL-ASSAD ERA Syria under Hafez al-Assad was far different from what remains of it today. As Ibrahim Hamidi dryly concluded in Asharq Al-Awsat,
“Syria, which used to vie for power beyond its border, is now an arena for the conflicts of others. From player to playground.” Of course, France was an eager and willing part of this era of engagement with a dominant Damascus for all of its faults and promises. France was also Hafez al-Assad’s first international visit as president and he met with President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. However, France soon became caught up in the brutal violence unfolding on Syria’s doorstep in Lebanon. Paris has dispatched troops as part of a peace keeping force in the latter half of the Lebanese Civil War, where Syria also had intervened. A British Thames TV report relayed that French President Francois Mitterrand told Damascus they would keep their troops there until Syria pulled out its own troops. The French embassy in Beirutwas bombed
in 1982. In October 1983, France lost 58 paratroopers and took part in retaliatory airstrikes against Iranian-backed militants in Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley, which was controlled by Syria. By February 1984, France and the United States had withdrawn from Lebanon. French President Francois Mitterrand visits the tomb of the unknown soldier in Syria, 1984 In November 1984, with the Lebanese Civil War raging on, President Mitterrand became the first French leader to visit Damascus since the country’s independence. Mitterrand, who had earlier met with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, sought to push President Hafez al-Assad on Lebanon and the Palestinian Liberation Organization. However, the elder Assad would have none of it. “No peace can be realized as long as a part of Arab territories is occupied and a part of our Arab people is subjected to oppression,” Assad toldMitterrand
over dinner. He also accused the West of confusing terrorism and resistance for the sake of national liberation. Assad had long learned that the use of non-state actors could provide diplomatic cover while allowing the Syrian government to advance its geostrategic interests, adding to the nuances of his repertoire with the French. During this era, Syria was heavily involved in the Lebanese conflict and largely reviled in the West for alleged involvement in acts of terrorism and assassination plots, including several against French interests in Lebanon and elsewhere. Relations between Paris and Damascus were indeed strained, but Mitterrand tried to put his best foot forward. Following his Damascus trip, he said, “There is nothing to prove that Syria was responsible. Since President Assad has always asserted that this was not the case, I do not see why his word should be doubted.” He also urged for Israel to complete its withdrawal from South Lebanon in order to restore Lebanese sovereignty. Relations continued and President Jacques Chirac held several meetings with Hafez al-Assad, including visits to Parisand Damascus
in 1998.
Hafez al-Assad and Jacques Chirac FRANCE AND BASHAR AL-ASSAD President Bashar al-Assad’s early tenure was briefly regarded as a promising opportunity to reorient Syria towards reform and the West. As occasionally noted,
Russian President Vladimir Putin once remarked that Assad was a more frequent guest in Western capitals than in Moscow. During the 2000s, France was the essential link for the younger Assad to expand Syria’s international diplomatic initiatives. The shortfalls of the Damascus Spring were not forgotten and overtures with the Europeans signaled that Damascus was still contemplating political and economic reforms. Still Bashar’s relationship with France in the early 2000s was not always smooth sailing. For instance, former prime minister Mahmoud Zuabi was expelled from the Baath Party as part of an anti-corruption driveheaded by Bashar
during the final months of his father’s rule. Zuabi was punished for his alleged involvement in a case regarding French company Airbus and later – at least according to the official story – committedsuicide.
President Assad’s 2001 visit to Paris. Despite this, France and Syria still managed to get on during Bashar’s rule. President Jacques Chirac was the only western leader to attend Hafez al-Assad’s funeral . Prior to the 2003 Iraq War, the two met again in Paris and discussed Iraq’s alleged WMD program. Both countries were on the same pageregarding the
need to avoid a war
against
Saddam’s regime.
Following the 2005 assassination of Rafik Hariri, a close friend of Chirac, relations between France and Syria again soured. Indeed, during the Cedar Revolution, Chirac helped the US orchestrate an end to the Syrian military occupation of Lebanon. As the 2006 summer war between Hezbollah and Israel unfolded, Chirac allegedly secretly toldIsraeli
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that France would support an Israeli invasion of Syria since France viewed Damascus as primarily responsible for arming Hezbollah. However, only two years later, France shifted tactics again. In September 2008, President Nicolas Sarkozy was the first Western head of state to travel to Syriain the wake of the
Hariri assassination. Perhaps hoping to entice Syria back into the international arena to gain influence in the region, the end of the decade brought about a slew of diplomatic overtures in bilateral relations. In July 2008, Assad visited Paris , which ruffled some feathers at the time due to his participation at the Bastille Day parade. _The New York Times_noted
he “studiously avoided ” former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, who was seated on the reviewing stand nearby. Later, under the auspice of the Union for the Mediterranean, the Syrian leader met with former Lebanese president Michel Suleiman and established formal diplomatic relationsbetween the two
countries, which was lauded as a victory for French engagement withDamascus.
Al-Rejoleh explained, “Before 2011, France was a good friend of Syria. Thanks to Sarkozy, he brought Assad into the international scene and broke Syria’s isolation. Relations between France and Damascus were soon flourishing.” Assad in Paris, 2008 Syrian-French relations indeed took a nose dive after the start of the Syrian conflict in 2011. Although Syria retains an embassy in Paris, France closed its Damascus embassy in 2012 and became one of the sharpest critics of the Syrian government’s wartime policies. During the conflict’s first years France sought to promote and give special status to the Syrian National Coalition opposition in Paris, even bestowing the unofficial title of “Monsieur Ambassador”
on Monzer Makhous.
Rejoleh said, “Former French ambassador Eric Chevallier was a popular diplomatic figure in Damascus among business and political figures. However, whether it was France’s policy at that time or if it was the Ambassador’s own action, he went with former US ambassador Robert Ford to endorse the protests in Hama, which harmed the demonstration’s legitimacy. Because of this, the protesters looked like they were pushed by the West to mobilize against Assad, which was not true at all. Since then, the French intelligence and diplomacy have been active and engaged in northeast Syria, especially with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the fight against the Islamic State (IS). As for leveraging any political outcome, there is nothing substantial that France can do politically aside from its intelligence role. It is the US and Russia’s call.” Paris’ current interests in Syria are multi-pronged and includes humanitarian concerns, orchestrating (or coaxing) a political transition, addressing the threat of terrorist groups, and the status of minority groups in Syria. This last point in particular has become even more complex, since France has long held a vested interest in its relationship with Levantine Christians, particularly with the more recent risks posed by a potential collapse of the Syrian regime. And, much to the chagrin of NATO partner Turkey, France has now forged a partnership with the Syrian Kurds, who lead the SDF coalition in thenortheast.
Throughout the entire Syrian conflict, Russia and France have been at diplomatic loggerheads. Their dispute over Syria’s future perhaps plays out most prominently in the United Nations Security Council. President Francois Hollande attempted to push through a UNSC resolution to refer Syria to the International Criminal Court in 2014 but was stymied by Moscow’s veto. In October 2016, Russia blocked a draft UNSC resolution (2/2016/846) produced by France and Spain to stop the bombardment of rebel-held Aleppo. One year later, Russia again vetoed a draft resolution (S/2017/172) put forward by France, the US, and the UK to impose sanctions on Syria for the use of chemical weapons. In September 2018, the French Foreign Ministryblasted Syria
for its bombing of Idlib Province. Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said, “The hypothesis of war crimes can not be excluded… once one begins to indiscriminately bomb civilian populations and hospitals.” President Macron’s cabinet and the Syrian air strikes in April, 2018 With the arrival of Emmanuel Macron, Paris attempted to rally the US to collaborate on Syria, but with mixed results. Things came to a head for Paris with the allegations that Syria was using chemical weapons on armed groups and civilians. France did not take part in the US April 2017 Shayrat missile strike, carried out in response to the Khan Shaykhun chemical attack. However, France did join in militarily against the Syrian government in response to the April 2018 chemical attacks in Douma. This perhaps marked the first time the French government directly targeted the Syrian government since the days of its colonial occupation. The moment was also a rare, high-profile sign of military cooperation between the US and France in the Middle East, which had been badly frayed during the 2003 Iraq War. In 2018, following one of President Trump’s declarationsthat the United
States would soon be withdrawing from Syria, Macron rushed to the rescue, noting “Ten days ago, President Trump was saying ‘the United States should withdraw from Syria.’ We convinced him it was necessary to stay for the long term.” In October 2019, Trump again vowed to pull out and began a withdrawal, but then was convinced to quietly keep some forces present.
After the fall of Eastern Ghouta in April 2018, France delivered some 50 tons of medical assistance to the Syrian government via the Russian military. An anonymous French diplomat told _Reuters_,
“This operation is very significant because it shows a willingness from the Russians to work with us on a matter of priority. This area is crying out for help.” Even now, France still is figuring out a way to secure humanitarian assistance to the Syrian people. In July 2020, the French UN delegation lamented the UN Security Council’s inability to approve a cross-border assistance resolution. A French Foreign Ministry statement placed the onus on China and Russia as well as Damascus: “The Syrian regime continues to impose major obstacles to the free and unrestricted delivery of humanitarian assistance to the civilian population, notably in the regions outside of its control.” As already noted, France has been a vocal proponent of the Syrian Kurds, loudly condemning Turkey’s military operations against the Syrian Democratic Forces coalition in Syria’s northeast region in October 2019. Central to France’s relations with Washington is the fear that it will be left to manage the International Coalition’s partnership with the SDF on its own.
Former President François Hollande even suggested suspending Turkey from NATO in response. But it was Macron who posited recently to _TheEconomist_
,
“If the Bashar al-Assad regime decides to retaliate against Turkey…will we commit ourselves under it?” This drama between France and Turkey has offered a potential opportunity to rekindle French-Russian relations. Macron did once quip, “Europe stretches from Lisbon to Vladivostok.” Could something of an informal entente develop between Russia and France in regards to Syria? France very clearly aims to carve out a spot for itself in the Middle East and Africa. Paris is increasing its military budget and wishes to modernize its forces and enhance its intelligence capabilities. It is not unthinkable that the Syrian regime would offer France low-hanging fruit in terms of intelligence sharing and anti-terrorism cooperation in the near future. Cooperation with Russia in regards to Syria could become all the more essential if the US finally does pull out completely. The US has already met with the Syrian security apparatus in 2018,
and Turkey followed suit this year with a meeting in Moscow. Paris will need to keep direct intelligence on the ground, with the SDF in northeast Syria, as well as in Damascus, thus following the lead of some of the Arab Gulf states. France’s future relationship with Syria could also be charted by the developments in another Middle East conflict. In Libya, France relies on oil imports from the territory controlled by Libyan LNA strongman Khalifa Haftar. The Libyan conflict is also connected to France’s Africa counterterrorism strategy in Mali and Niger. In May 2020, French Foreign Minister Drian noted “The crisis is deepening. We are facing a Syrianization of Libya.” Turkey is increasingly at odds with NATO and internal tensions are increasing, with France in particular. In June 2020, France decried Turkey’s intervention in the North African conflict and anonymous French officials accused it of “exploiting NATO.” Al-Rojoleh said, “I think France now will have a stronger role to play especially in the wake of Brexit. We might see competition between France and Germany on who leads the EU efforts in the region but that is something to be determined by military spending and the ability to engage on ground with leverage. France has a role to play between the US and Iran in terms of back channeling. It is clear that there are divisions between Germany and France for the leading role in the Middle East region. There is disunity among the EU members namely the NATO members on various conflicts such as Syria, and Libya and nature of the relationships with Turkey and Russia. Generally speaking, France and Germany have competing positions and a lack of unity when it comes to Libya. They clearly support the opponents on ground. As for Syria, Germany and France both condemned the Turkish offensive military operation in NE Syria. The two European countries have humanitarian interests and commitments to that region, where the Turkish president, along with Russia’s president, met with the German and French leaders to discuss a political solution and concrete humanitarian support for refugees.” France also has enduring security concerns regarding the remnants of the Islamic State group, along with its own great power ambitions.
From an airbase in Jordan,
France has conducted airstrikes in support of the SDF and to counter IS’ power structure spanning Syria and Iraq. In June, France repatriated a small group of IS children back from Syria. Foreign Minister Le Drian made a July visitto Syria’s
neighbor, Iraq, to discuss the resurgence of IS and the fate of the French IS prisoners in Iraqi prisoners. France is also closely aligned with Syria’s arch-nemesis, Israel. French special forces in a Nexter Aravis MRAP supporting the SDF in Northern Syria, April 2018 France has staunchly supported the SDF with arms, training, and intelligence to fight IS. There is also a small special forces component present on the ground inside Syria. The SDF’s main force, the Kurdish YPG militia, is one of Turkey’s main enemies. This comes at a time when Turkey is actively pursuing military recourse against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in northern Iraq, the YPG’s ideological cohort. France has also been pushing hard for a UNSC-sponsored ceasefire between the Turks and the SDF during the covid-19 pandemic. In February, Macron also tried to corral Russia and Turkey to convince their respective client forces to agree to a ceasefire in the midst of the 2020 regime offensive in IdlibProvince.
Turkish media outlets – most of them state-influenced – are now ramping up their vilification of France by labeling the country’sinfluence
as neo-colonialist
,
just as anti-Turkish parties fret about neo-Ottomanism.
Anonymous Turkish officials scoffed at France’s role in the regionas a child who lost
its toy. As the United States solemnly backs away from outright notions of regime change, where does this leave France with its future relationship with the Assads? Turkish media outlets have already speculated about France’s decision to crack down on its special guest, Rifaat al-Assad, noting that the regime “did not like the uncle anyway.” The recent court verdict against Rifaat has led to the French government seizingsome of his assets,
including two townhomes, a chateau in Val-d’Oise, and offices in Lyon.CONCLUSION
The Syrian government channels the spirit of Maysalun in the sense that, in the face of the Caesar Act sanctions, it will remain defiant amid international punishment and would rather go down with the sinking ship than budge one inch as a result of foreign pressure. Although a national defeat, Maysalun’s character endures through the ages. This applies to the Syrian rebellion as well. The dreams of shaking off a musty dictatorship will not be forgotten in the wake of the regime’s military triumph. Syria will be badly wounded for decades by its brutal conflict, but the distant shadows of Maysalun reach far into the present, offering a morsel of solace and dignity for all sides of the conflict. A May 2011 Facebook post from “Yousef al-Azma,” reading, “Thepeople want!!!”
Dr. Joshua Landis noted, “The Battle of Maysalun has always been used as a touchstone or symbol of Syrianness. Appropriating it is the first job of every political movement.” He added, “At the beginning of the uprising, many Syrians changed their Facebook photos to that of Gen. Yousef al-Azma, in an effort to paint themselves – the opposition – as the real Syrians fighting for freedom and the Assad regime and the Syrian army as the French colonialists, who wereoccupying Syria.”
The French presidential election in 2022 could also see a dramatic about-face for Paris regarding Syria. If a right-wing populist challenger – à la Marine Le Penand her National
Rally (RN) party – secures a victory, France could go full throttle in ratcheting up a Christian-fostered nationalism and seek out an understanding with Syria as part of a pressure tactic against Turkey. Even if it is a center-right candidate that is able to oust Macron, the positions of France and Turkey in NATO are growing more and more questionable. On the other hand, just as a change in the French presidency could offer Assad a potential lifeline, a post-Assad Damascus would offer France its own dramatic opening into Syria. An economic and diplomatic bilateral renewal would surely follow, forgood and ill.
France remains intricately linked to Syria and could perhaps be forever destined for a déjà vu relationship with Damascus. Attempts for future French governments to repair ties with the Assad regime would likely result in high-level bouts of diplomacy in return for mere photo-ops. Likewise, France’s friendship has dual-meaning for Syrians. Maysalun represents a stark reminder of the dangers of French colonialism. However, for the regime’s opponents, they primarily view Paris as a beacon of light and are thus willing to overlook France’s heavy handed history in order to push for further diplomatic and military interventions in Syria. While these two nations have significant differences, they also share much in common. Both have an intense pride in their language, culture, and a romanticized view of their history. National sovereignty is highly venerated given their history of foreign occupation. France, like Syria, has also experienced its own brutal history of internecine strife, most notably with the 1871 Paris Commune, which resulted in the killing of an estimated 20,000 Communards during La Semaine Sanglante (the Bloody Week). Likewise, pre-war Syria faced its own rebellions and was known for the infamous Hama Massacre in 1982, with thousands of Muslim Brotherhood members killed. However, in spite of France’s role as one of President Assad’s most prominent opponents since the beginning of the conflict, Paris now seemingly has to find a way to live with him. Russia and the United States will certainly wield the most clout and influence in shaping the outcome of Syria’s war, but it will be France lurking in the background, prodding, steering, and guiding Washington, Moscow, and its European allies in the direction Paris ultimately chooses. For Damascus and Paris, the Battle of Maysalun’s 100th anniversary marks yet a new fork in the road for their bilateral relations; will it veer into years of tension and sanctions-laden antagonism, or rather towards the path of tentative renewal and forgiveness?SHARE THIS:
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