By Nir Rosen
James
Clapper, the United States Director of National Intelligence, warned last month
of al Qaeda taking advantage of the growing conflict in Syria. The Syrian
regime and its supporters frequently claim that the opposition is dominated by
al Qaeda-linked extremists. Opposition supporters often counter that the
uprising is completely secular. But months of reporting on the ground in Syria
revealed that the truth is more complex.
Syria's
uprising is not a secular one. Most participants are devout Muslims inspired by
Islam. By virtue of Syria's demography most of the opposition is Sunni Muslim
and often come from conservative areas. The death of the Arab left means
religion has assumed a greater role in daily life throughout the Middle East. A
minority is secular and another minority is comprised of ideological Islamists.
The majority is made of religious-minded people with little ideology, like most
Syrians. They are not fighting to defend secularism (nor is the regime) but
they are also not fighting to establish a theocracy. But as the conflict grinds
on, Islam is playing an increasing role in the uprising.
Mosques
became central to Syria's demonstrations as early as March 2011 and influenced
the uprising's trajectory, with religion becoming increasingly more important.
Often activists described how they had "corrected themselves" after
the uprising started. Martyrs became important to a generation that had only
seen martyrs on television from Iraq, Palestine, and Lebanon. "People got
more religious," one activist in Damascus's Barzeh neighborhood explained,
"they got closer to death, you could be a martyr so people who drank or
went out at night corrected themselves." Some Arab satellite news stations
have also contributed to the dominance of Islamists by interviewing more of
them and focusing on them as opposed to more secular opposition figures or
intellectuals. In Daraa activists complained that satellite networks were
marginalizing prominent leftists.
Clerics
were influential from the beginning in much of the country, but their authority
is not absolute. Sheikhs have often played a positive role in the uprising,
enforcing discipline and exhorting armed and unarmed activists to act
responsibly. One reason why Homs has not descended into Bosnia-like sectarian
massacres is because of the strong influence of opposition sheikhs.
"Sheikhs
have a role," said a cleric active in the opposition in the cities of Hama
and Latakia, "in an area where people are scared a sheikh in his sermon
can encourage them to go out." As a result many sheikhs have been arrested
while others have fled the country. Opposition supporters are also vocal when
they disapprove of a sheikh's positions. In November, in the Tadamun area of
Damascus, a sheikh at the Ali ibn Abi Talib mosque condemned demonstrations and
spoke about conspiracies in language resembling that of the government. A
friend stood up in disgust in the middle of the sermon and walked out. Others
followed him spontaneously and began demonstrating. After five minutes security
forces arrived and they all ran away. "It's forbidden to pray in front of
him," my friend told me later that day, "either speak the truth or be
quiet."
In
the Damascus suburb of Arbeen, opposition leaders spoke sardonically of their
local clerics. "The sheikhs here all belong to security and the Baath
party," one leader there told me. "The sheikhs told us not to go out
and not to watch the biased channels. We went out against the sheikhs, shouting
down with this sheikh or that sheikh. There were no good sheikhs with the
people here, either he was afraid or he was with the regime. The sheikhs described
the youth as thugs." Revolutionaries threatened Sheikh Hassan Seyid
Hassan, Arbeen's top cleric, saying they would break his car and burn his house
and office. In a sermon he apologized for condemning the uprising.
One
of the main causes for the first demonstrations in Arbeen was the demand for
the release of 21 local young men arrested in 2006. The young men, and some
were boys, had come under the influence of Salafi jihadist clerics and were
blamed by the regime for an attempted attack on the state television
headquarters. "Here the main reason we came out was to demand the release
of our prisoners" one local leader said. "We are religious and that's
why we are oppressed."
Near
Harasta, in Duma, I met with Abu Musab, an insurgent commander. He claimed he
had been fired from his job as an imam for "speaking the truth" and
talking about dignity. The strict Hanbali school of Islam dominates Duma and
not a single woman can be seen on its streets without her face fully concealed
by a burqa. Piety was one of the reasons why Duma was so revolutionary, he told
me. "A sheikh does not have to say fight Bashar," he said, "he
can just refer to a chapter from the Quran and everybody will understand.
Because they are religious they have more motivation and ethics." But he
stressed that most people in Duma did not seek an Islamic state. According to
Abu Musab, he supported an armed struggle against the regime from the first day
and most others only did after Ramadan. He took me to a funeral for two martyrs
of the revolution, one of them an armed fighter. As the crowd of hundreds left
they chanted, "The people want a declaration of jihad!"
Many
of the names chosen for Friday demonstrations are religious in connotation and
many of the insurgent groups who misleadingly call themselves the Free Syrian
Army have names that are particularly Sunni Muslim in nature. The insurgent
groups' names are increasingly Islamic and even Salafi in their tone, such as
the "Abu Dujana Battalion," the "Abu Ubeida Battalion," the
"Muhajireen wal Ansar Battalion" and even a group named after Yazid,
a divisive figure in Islamic history who is hated by Shiites but respected by
hardline Sunnis (who do not like Shiites).
What
about the Muslim Brotherhood (MB)? Syria saw MB inspired uprisings in the
1960s, 70s, and 80s. In the 1980s a radical group that found the Syrian Muslim
Brotherhood (SMB) too moderate split off and called itself the Fighting
Vanguard. They were responsible for much of the violence that was blamed on the
Brotherhood that traumatizes Syrian society to this day, much as the regime's
attack on Hama where the armed Muslim Brothers concentrated also left permanent
scars that have been reopened in the last year. SMB members fled into exile and
remained active in the opposition, which also led them to dominate the Syrian
National Council (SNC). During the administration of President George W. Bush
the United States reached out to the SMB in order to undermine the regime of
Bashar al-Assad. Within the SNC, the SMB is behaving in a very authoritarian
fashion and is facing growing criticism from both secular and Islamist
opposition. The divides in the SNC are not Islamist versus secular. The
secularist SNC President Burhan Ghalioun walks with the SMB. Other Islamists
like the Imad al Din al Rashid's Syrian National Movement are hostile to the
SMB.
The
regime has sought to conflate the opposition with the SMB of the 1980s, knowing
that if it succeeds it can legitimize dealing with them with violence but if it
fights them on the political front it will lose. "The ideology of the
Muslim Brothers has remained quite influential in Syria, but as an
organization, they completely ceased to exist inside the country in the early
1980s," Thomas Pierret, a lecturer in contemporary Islam at the University
of Edinburgh, said. "A proof of that is that the Islamist cells dismantled
by the authorities over the last decades were linked to the Islamic Liberation
Party or to Jihadi networks, but never to the Muslim Brothers." In reality
popular mobilization does not require the orders of the SMB, but for some in
the opposition the uprising is revenge for the 1980s and the SMB is indeed
playing a role. Most Syrian supporters of the opposition associate the 1980s
with a time of draconian regime repression and collective punishment while
regime supporters and minorities associate it with sectarian violence and
terrorism.
In
January, I spoke with a knowledgeable official from a different national branch
of the MB who was based in Beirut. "The revolution in Syria today has
nothing to do with the MB of the 1980s," he said, but he told me that the
SMB was involved in the current uprising. Individual members of the SMB played
a role organizing the uprising in Homs, Hama, and in the coastal areas, he
said. The SMB and its Lebanese branch, the Jamaa Islamiya, were sending money
and aid via Tripoli in Lebanon. They were also hosting families fleeing from
Syria, providing them with food, clothing and shelter while sending aid to
their relatives left behind in Syria. "The Jamaa Islamiya has a very clear
loud position on Syria," he said, "they are against the regime and
supporting revolution. And the Brotherhood does not just support with words. It
might be money and it might be some tools and facilitation. And if the Lebanese
Brotherhood is doing it, it is with the cooperation of the Brotherhood of
Syria." The Jamaa Islamiya was playing a role via the SMB, he explained.
"The Brotherhood shares the same school of thinking of Hassan al
Banna," he said, "so I hold the same ideas that a Lebanese,
Jordanian, Yemeni, Libyan, Tunisian Brotherhood or even in Jakarta. Every group
has the same thoughts. We share ideas and thoughts. We are an organization
looking for a new era so we are organized and ready to deal with a new
situation in the region. The Brotherhood has a huge responsibility on their
shoulders. If they succeed they will have legitimacy to be leaders of Muslims
and Arabs and if they fail they might lose their opportunity. We are preparing
ourselves for 80 years. We are not dreaming we are dealing with reality."
"The
Brotherhood is not like they were in the past," said one leader of the
Homs Revolutionary Council (HRC) who receives money from them among many
others. "There are Muslims Brothers in groups of two or three and they are
giving support to people inside Syria. They are not organized like they were
before." Leaders of the SMB in Saudi Arabia do not have good communication
with the SMB in other places. Abu Mohammed al Rifai, an SMB leader in Lebanon
gives support to some groups in Homs and elsewhere. The SMB does not have
cadres on the ground, nor does it have much ideological influence. Most people
I spoke to admitted that their role was limited to sending money but they were
not sending it as the SMB, only as individuals who happened to belong to the
SMB. In Homs some leaders view their role as positive but they did not see it
as the SMB acting as an organization, which it did not have the capacity to do
anymore. Homs receives help only from members of the Syrian wing of the MB who
are based in the Gulf, Lebanon, or Jordan. Most of the money has gone to aid
and medical support. In late 2011, the SMB had a meeting in Saudi Arabia during
which they decided against supporting the armed groups. As the SMB they did not
want to be involved in this, perhaps as a result of their experience in the
1980s, but individual members of the SMB send money that is channeled to
insurgent activities as well.
I
met Syrian activists who met senior SMB leader Melhem al Drubi in Turkey, where
he was giving money to activists. Members of the Drubi family who live in Saudi
Arabia are also important financiers of the uprising. "We told him we want
money for weapons when we met him in Turkey in May," one activist told me.
"He said no money for weapons this is peaceful revolution. We asked for
money for hardship funds, he said we have people on the ground but we have not
organized ourselves yet. He gave nobody that he met in Istanbul any money. He
just wanted to know the situation on the ground. He wanted to know level of
support for the Brotherhood. Now the Brotherhood controls a lot of access to
money in Homs and the Damascus suburbs. But just because people take money from
the Brotherhood does not mean they support it. The Brotherhood wants to improve
and increase its name. They are not scary but they are trying to control. Some
people are not happy about how the Brotherhood is financing on the ground. Some
people who buy weapons are not ready to deal with the Brotherhood. The
Brotherhood only gives certain people money for hardship or weapons."
Abu
Abdu, a field commander who deals with military and civilian elements of the
opposition in the Damascus suburbs told me that he had received calls from
people in Jordan, Turkey, London, and the United States who belonged to the
Muslim Brotherhood. "People offer us money but there is a hidden agenda to
it and we refuse it," he said. "This is a popular revolution, I work
for God and the nation. I come out against oppression." He picked up his
cigarette pack. "I'm not going to replace Marlboro with Gaullois."
"The
Brotherhood doesn't scare me," said one leading activist from the Ismaili
sect. "They don't have representation on the ground that can endanger
democracy." A Christian activist he worked with on delivering weapons and
aid throughout the country agreed with the assessment, adding that, "the
enemy of my enemy is my friend." One prominent Druze activist in Damascus
said, "I am not afraid of the Brotherhood. They have been outside, they
became more secular. Syrian Islam is moderate and Sufi." Sufi brotherhoods
are mystical groups organized around a sheikh who is believed to have a
personal connection to God. Sufism is very mainstream in Syria, since most of
the country's Muslim scholars have received some Sufi training and often
specialize as Sufi sheikhs.
Many
other members of the opposition are less sanguine about the role of the SMB.
One young activist in Barzeh told me he did not want the Brotherhood. "I
don't want women to be completely covered up," he said. "This is not
nice." But like many people in the Arab world, he associated the word
‘ilmani, or secular, with anti-religious, and as a result was also against
Ghalioun. "I want something in the middle," he said. An older
opposition supporter in the same neighborhood told me he wanted a civilian
Islamic government "like in Turkey," he said, "but not Islam by
force." The Brotherhood made a mistake in the 1980s, he continued. While
the SMB in Damascus was engaged in peaceful proselytization, the Brotherhood in
Aleppo and Hama took up arms. "It's a mistake to take up arms against a
brutal regime. In reaction the regime thought anybody who prayed was in the MB.
This is a revolution of the youth and it was good for the Brotherhood to deny
that they are behind the revolution. The Brotherhood have no presence on the
ground."
Another
Damascus activist worried that many demonstrations in the Damascus suburbs had
Islamic slogans. Indeed in Harasta I heard songs about Muslims and infidels. In
Duma and Sanamein I heard demonstrators calling for jihad while in Zamalka in
evening demonstrations people prayed in the middle of a busy commercial street.
The activist told me that in Homs's Dir Baalbeh neighborhood, the Brotherhood's
slogan of "Islam is the solution" was raised. "In the last
months the Brotherhood became strong on the ground," he said.
"Communists told me they won't go out in demonstrations that say ‘God is
great' and religious things. A lot of demonstrations in Daraa, Homs, Idlib are
led by clerics and it scares secular people." He complained that the SMB
chose the names for the Friday demonstrations. "'So National Unity' Friday
became ‘Khalid bin al Walid' [the early Muslim leader who conquered Syria in
the 7th century] Friday and ‘We won't Kneel' Friday became ‘We Won't Kneel
Except before God."
Many
Syrians with ties to the Brotherhood fled in the 1980s. Now, like the Attasis
of Homs and the Abazeeds of Daraa, they send money back home. Throughout Syria
I heard concerns from the opposition that money from SMB members was ending up
in the hands of the wrong people. In Homs some funds were going to former
criminals or to armed groups who acted without consulting with the local
civilian political leadership of the uprising. In Hama and Idlib I heard
similar complaints.
"We
don't work with anybody," said Khaled Nasrallah, a leader of an armed
group operating in Hama and Idlib, "not with the Brotherhood. We are a
popular revolution. They want to control you and we are nationalists. We won't
finish this oppression so somebody else will come and tell us what to do. We
are worried about the future, after the revolution, worried about the
Brotherhood or Salafis or other parties. We don't want somebody to tell us what
to do in the future." A senior leader of the Homs Revolutionary Council
told me "there is no organization called the Muslim Brotherhood inside
Syria. This is the difference between Syria and other Arab countries. The
sheikhs in Homs who have a revolutionary role are Sufis. None of them belong to
movements."
In
the Jabal Azawiya town of Fleifil people still recall the three times the
Syrian army raided the area by helicopter and arrested locals. "They
raided every village," according to one local leader. "From 1980 to
1988 they would constantly raid the villages." They also point to a
massacre committed by the regime in the main square of Jisr al Shughur in 1980.
In Idlib's Jabal Azawiya I met Yusuf al Hassan, a powerful former cigarette
smuggler who leads an armed group and has been fighting the regime since June.
Hassan, who is said by other insurgent commanders to receive some help from
Turkish military intelligence, crossed the border into Turkey and met with SMB
Secretary General Riad al Shaqfa. But he didn't trust the SMB, he told me, and
as a result the SMB now opposed him as well. "I asked for five
representatives from the whole area to distribute aid through them,"
Hassan said. "The Brotherhood was against this. This was cause of my
problems with the Brotherhood in Jabal Azawiya. The Brotherhood are not
accepted among us, they are racist, thieves, corrupt. We are the middle Islam.
They divided the revolution, sent money to a few people. People came to me and
I gave weapons and bullets to everybody without discrimination. When our
revolution got weaker in the summer four or five months ago, the Brotherhood
intervention appeared." A fighter from Jisr al Shughur agreed with him.
"We are Muslims, not Muslim Brothers," he said, provoking the
laughter of other insurgents with us.
In
rural Hama leaders of various armed groups resented a man called Abu Rayan who
received help from the Brotherhood in Turkey and Jordan to fund his armed
group. I met with him and other leaders of armed groups in a mountain
safe-house bordering Hama and Idlib. Abu Rayan had a gray beard. He wore a
pistol under his armpit. As we talked Abu Rayan sent a group of his men from
his Abu Fida brigade to help men from Hama's Salahedin brigade who were
besieged in the city's Hamidiya area. Other commanders resented him for not
cooperating with them. Bassim, a commander from Hama told me that he had asked
Abu Rayan for help in the past but had not received a single bullet. He only
helped Hama city, the other leaders told me, while others cooperated as needed,
including across the line into Idlib. Abu Rayan said he had met with Turkish
intelligence. He was a vulgar man, whose cursing made the other men
uncomfortable. "We kiss one thousand asses just so they can send us money
for a satellite phone," he complained. The other men told me he was a
former drug dealer in Hama city. "It made me hate the Brotherhood even
more that they support a man like this," said a Sufi sheikh from rural
Hama called Sheikh Omar Rahmun who also had an armed group which operated in
rural Hama and Idlib.
The
city of Hama was still a reservoir for the SMB, he told me, but the resistance
was taking place in the rural areas surrounding it and Abu Rayan was not
helping out the rural insurgency. "Abu Rayan doesn't fight," said the
sheikh. "He is a leader. Abu Rayan gets help from the SMB but the people
in his group don't know this. Ninety percent of Abu Rayan's men would leave if
they knew he works with the SMB. We want the revolution to win. We want the
people who get help not to put it in their pocket but to give it to the people
in need. People have empty ammunition clips. Abu Rayan has money, we
don't."
"The
U.S. won with an alliance with the Brotherhood in Libya, Tunisia, and
Egypt" he said. "America cooperates with the Brotherhood. But the
alliance has to be studied. This alliance is failed. There was a long information
war against the Brotherhood and it is now an expired product. It is being
treated as bigger than its size on the ground. The Brotherhood does not have a
presence on the ground but it gave some money and communication devices to some
groups. They give you money now so they can ride on your shoulders in the
future. After June or July groups and parties started to appear. ‘I am from
this party or that party.' Our disaster is the Brotherhood in particular. The
Brotherhood don't have future in Syria without coercion. In Syria one party
cannot win over other parties. We refuse to work under any party. We don't want
a party that society doesn't accept. We don't want people to be coerced. Syria
is a Sufi society. With two beats of the of miz-har (a Sufi drum) you can get
all of Syria behind you, but they won't follow Salafis after fifty years."
The
word "Salafi" haunts the Syrian uprising. The regime has turned this
conservative practice of Islam into a smear of the opposition, hoping to
associate them with jihadist Salafis like those of al Qaeda in Iraq. In nearly
every demonstration I attended opposition songs dismissed the notion that they
were Salafis. But in Syria, as elsewhere in the Middle East, some practices
associated with Salafis have become popularized even if people do not identify
themselves as such. In part this is thanks to the influence of Saudi Arabia.
And it is Syrians in Saudi Arabia who play a major role in financing the
uprising, giving them additional influence. In four months traveling through
Syria, I found Salafis to be a minority within the uprising, but nevertheless
they play a growing role.
Last
November, I first met one of the most powerful men in Damascus's urban suburb
of Harasta. Tough looking activists in tracksuits who arranged our meeting were
contemptuous of the local opposition coordination committee. "The
Sheikh," or Abu Omar, was not from the committee, said one, "he is
from the group that fears God." The men explained to me that it was not
the coordination committee that was in charge of Harasta, it was the
"shabab," the guys like them. Abu Omar was a thick man wearing a dish
dasha and leather jacket. As we spoke over dinner, he asked me if I knew what a
Salafi was. I said it was somebody who followed the righteous companions of the
Prophet Mohammed. "It's somebody devoted in his religion who doesn't stray
to one side or another," he said. "Now they use Salafi to mean al
Qaeda or terrorist. The Syrian regime is trying to persuade the West that it is
fighting terror like the West," adding that "they failed." We
sat in a room full of religious books and talked about the very active armed
opposition in Harasta. "Violence has bred violence," he said. Abu
Omar explained that their struggle against the regime was a jihad, but without
foreign military intervention (and he did not care from where), the regime
would not fall.
Abu
Abdu, a military leader in Harasta confided that many people hoped there would
be a declaration of jihad against the regime. "But they don't want to be
accused of being Salafis." He did not expect such a declaration because
the regime was not led by infidels and there were many Muslims in it, while the
opposition also feared being accused of sectarianism.
In
the Ghab area of rural Hama I spent many hours sitting with insurgents and
local sheikhs. "We don't meet in mosques because the revolution is Islamic
but because mosques are the center of gathering for people," said sheikh
Amer, an imam in the town of Qalat Mudhiq. Men in the room dismissed the
government's accusations that they were Salafis. "Some of these guys
drink," one of them told me. "Our religion Islam is tolerant,"
one said, "we won't be like them," meaning Alawites. "There will
be no mercy for the Alawites who carried weapons or were shabiha," the
sheikh told me.
In
March, Sheikh Amer gave a sermon about speaking right in front of an oppressive
sultan. A demonstration followed the prayer. Syrian security called him in and
asked why he was inciting people. Sheikh Amer is now a spiritual and moral
advisor to the armed men. I was told, "he teaches the guys what is
permitted and forbidden, values, don't harm Christians and Alawites, don't
steal."
I
drove through many "liberated" villages where insurgents had their
own checkpoints and patrols. I met Abu Ghazi, a self-proclaimed "moderate
Salafi" and the representative of the Ghab coordination committee on the
Hama Revolutionary Council. Abu Ghazi was respected by other militia commanders
in the Ghab. He was in his 30s and had a short beard with no mustache. His
house had just been attacked by regime security forces for the third time and
destroyed. He complained that the committee was neglected. "The
Brotherhood support their group, Salafis support their group, secularists
support their group. I am buying a satellite phone with my own money. I have a
farm, so I make money from that. People are selling fish so I can buy bullets
for the guys. We have a national agenda. I don't want the agenda of the
Brotherhood or Salafis. I want a national agenda, even if I am a Salafi. I know
the situation here better than somebody in Europe, Saudi, or UAE. I don't want
a sectarian war here. We would get a lot of help if we gave our area to one
current. The Salafi jihadi current offered help. Salafi jihadis have a lot of
money but need an oath of loyalty. The man who gives weapons doesn't give them
for free." He feared chaos in the future if such parties gained influence.
"I want law and order," he said.
I
was in the Ghab when Syrian security forces raided nearby villages. Hundreds of
fighters from village militias in the area gathered on the mountains above in
case they were needed. Among them were insurgents from the Saad bin Muadh
brigade, led by a Salafi called Abu Talha, who had links with groups outside
Syria. "Abu Talha's group only works for themselves," a local militia
commander complained. "They don't share and don't cooperate much."
Abu Talha was originally from the village of Tweina in al Ghab. Like many
Syrian Salafis he had spent time in the Sednaya prison. "They are all
graduates of Sednaya," he said.
A
Salafi commander of an armed group called Abu Sleiman united the area against
him. "When people heard he wanted to make his own emirate all the mountain
turned against him," said a local village militia leader. "We are all
brothers from here to Daraa. We are revolutionaries and that's it. No
parties."
"Salafis
like Abu Suleyman in Jabal Azawiya offer to loan you weapons for specific
operations," other insurgents told me. But they had refused. Abu Suleiman
was a former drug dealer, they said, who became a Salafi after spending time in
the Sednaya prison. "Abu Sleiman had conditions for helping others,"
said a fighter from Kafr Ruma village in Jabal Azawiya. "He said ‘be under my emirate and give
me back the weapons when the operation is over.' But we won't remove Bashar to
be under somebody else. So Abu Sleiman is rejected by the mountain. We expelled
him, he was extreme." He was now in Turkey, they told me.
In
quiet evenings the fighters of Jabal Azawiya gathered for large meals in
different houses. One night I was with them for an immense tray of knafeh as
they watched the nightly talk show with the sectarian exiled opposition cleric
Adnan al Arur. He was very popular in the region, they said. Al Arur, whose
anti-Shiite rants were divisive long before the uprising in Syria and whose
name is often chanted in demonstrations, famously warned Alawites who participate
in the repression that they would be chopped and that their flesh would be fed
to dogs. Arur has not often spoken about Alawites and his popularity does not
stem from his sectarianism but because he has religious credentials and speaks
in an angry colloquial voice when praising the demonstrators every day. But his
popularity has encouraged secular Sunni and minorities to prefer the regime.
"We
are grateful to the Salafi fighters," said the Sufi Sheikh Omar Rahmun who
led an armed group in Hama. "But I am against canceling people, I am
against canceling you and you canceling me. Of the fighters, Salafis are less
than one percent." One night Sheikh Omar led a group of fighters in a Sufi
style of singing called a Mulid. "Its good that Sufis raise their head a
little bit so people won't think the revolution is Salafi," one of the
local fighters told me. The role of Sufi clerics in the opposition should not
come as a surprise. I have seen Sufi insurgent groups in Falluja and other
parts of Iraq and as well as armed Sufis in Somalia and Afghanistan.
Further
north, rural Aleppo has hundreds of fighters in the insurgency. In the town of
Anadan, slogans for "the Faruq revolution" are written on walls.
Faruq is another name for Omar, a figure revered by Sunnis. On other walls
people sent their greetings to Omar as well as Abu Bakr and Uthman, who are
also revered by Sunnis. Many men from the area volunteered to fight in Iraq.
While most of the activist leaders in Anadan have university degrees in
subjects like chemistry, mathematics and Arabic, all of them are Islamists and
some are Salafis.
A
48-year-old man called Abu Jumaa leads the uprising there. His son spent one
year in an Air Force intelligence prison, accused of belonging to the jihadist
group Jund Asham and enduring severe torture. Before the revolution many of
Anadan's youths were accused of Islamic extremism and arrested. One Friday in
February demonstrators shouted, "the people want a declaration of
jihad!"
Abu
Jumaa arranged for the armed and unarmed needs of the revolution in Anadan. In
his house he has Kalashnikovs, shotguns, and improvised explosive devices. One
of the spiritual leaders of the revolution in Anadan is a sheikh called Yusuf
who is not a Salafi. The Muslim Brotherhood still has influence in Anadan,
which suffered in the 1980s during the Brotherhood's uprising and many
residents were banned from state employment.
Armed
locals in Anadan claim that security forces have not raided the town
"because if they come security will be massacred." Non-Sunnis were
removed from the military security headquarters in Anadan so that they would be
less likely to be killed by insurgents. One Friday morning in December
opposition activists tore down a large picture of Assad in the main square. One
of the guards in the nearby security headquarters cheered them on. By February,
the security forces had been expelled by the insurgents from Anadan and its men
were working on helping their brethren in Aleppo city.
Another
pan-Islamist movement, Hizbultahrir, or the Party of Liberation, is also
reappearing. In Sanamein, the second largest town in Daraa province, I met with
Abu Khalid, one of the political leaders of the uprising there who also often
led demonstrations. Sanamein was a conservative town. Most people prayed. All
its sheikhs were Shafii, there were no Sufis, and it seemed as though everybody
loved sheikh Adnan al Arur. Abu Khalid belonged to Hizbultahrir, a utopian
pan-Islamic organization committed to reestablishing the caliphate through
peaceful means. Despite his affiliation with this movement Abu Khalid was
against the involvement of any political party. "I am against giving a
religious tone to the revolution." He added, "It's a popular
revolution."
In
January, leaders of armed groups in Homs including those from the opposition's
Faruq Brigade sent messages to the Muslim Brotherhood complaining that the
Brotherhood was smuggling weapons into Homs but hiding them or burying there.
"They avoid to use their weapons now to fight and we are afraid that they
want us to defeat the regime and then they will use their arms when we are
tired." The Brotherhood had no people on the ground, all leaders in Homs
agreed, but there were signs they were trying to recruit from other groups. The
discovery that they were hiding weapons had created a crisis of trust. The
utopian group Hizbultahrir has long had a presence in Homs. Many of its members
were arrested over the years, but it was not a violent group and hence they
spent less time in prison than others. They have recently made their presence
felt in Homs once again, building a network and financing some armed groups.
In
late December, some men belonging to Hizbultahrir tried to raise the black and
white flag of Islam in the Inshaat neighborhood of Homs. They also distributed
leaflets in Inshaat saying it is religiously prohibited to deal with the
Americans or ask for support from NATO, people should only depend on God. The
local political opposition committee in Inshaat told them they did not want
these things in their neighborhood. Likewise HRC activists stopped the
Hizbultahrir men from raising the flags, explaining that only flags approved by
the HRC could be raised. The HRC leadership warned their people in Inshaat to
be careful because Islamists could use this incident to say the HRC is against
Islam. But others complained to the HRC about their refusal to raise the flag
of Islam.
"Islamists
are going so fast," a leader of the HRC told me. "They are not
waiting. A few days ago Hizbultahrir put up flag of Islam, but everybody knows
that this slogan is for Hizbultahrir. Hizbultahrir started recruiting, they
were arrested in previous years, and now they started again building their
networks. They started working with armed groups. Financing them. Other
Islamists also started working, they believe the regime is about to fall and
they started building their relationships."
"This
generation is enlightened and was not raised in Salafi education, unlike
Egypt," said one leading activist from Homs. Salafi satellite television
stations like Safa and Wesal are popular in Syria because Syrians were deprived
of being religious for years, he told me. "Syria was the kingdom of
silence for a long time," he said. "Arur was the first to speak with
this courage. People don't like Arur because he is Salafi or Sufi. I watched
him in the beginning. He was a sheikh and the words that came from him were
trusted and he spoke with courage."
He
spoke of Syria's most senior cleric Said Ramadan al Buti. "If Butti spoke
in one hundred degrees less than Arur he would be more popular than Arur,"
he said. "Buti's thoughts are good, if he was with the revolution and
spoke then Bashar would have left a long time ago. We want a man who is
enlightened and a thinker. People liked Burhan Ghalioun at first. They stopped
liking him not because he was secular but because they feel like he didn't
deliver. I respect him because he is enlightened and stood with the people. The
people are more simple than the parties, the want a program, to eat to live
freely, not to live under oppression and a security member will mess up the
neighborhood, and they want something tangible and something to be proud of.
This generation is not Muslim Brothers, Hizbultahrir, or Salafi. They want
somebody who will serve them. But we can't deny that this is an Islamic society
so somebody could take advantage of Islam for electoral purposes."
"Some
people are disappointed," said another leader of the HRC. "And don't
expect anything from the Arab League which is a League of Arab dictators and
the security council did nothing for us so some Islamists think we have to
depend only on god and call on jihad. Those depressed people now blame the
sheikhs because sheikhs do not call for jihad and people try to pressure
sheikhs to make call for jihad." But he disagreed with this. "Why
should we announce jihad? Just to give regime excuse to kill us?"
The
Syrian uprising's reliance on outside help will only increase radicalization.
In January officials from the HRC complained to me that the live broadcasts of
Homs demonstrations shown on networks like al Jazeera Mubashar were controlled
by a Salafi, Abu Yasir, who falsely claimed he was in Homs and was causing
problems for them. During a January sit-in in the Homs neighborhood of
Khaldiyeh the HRC tried to arrange for a senior member and founder of their
council to speak to protesters live from his exile in Jordan. This member was a
Sufi sheikh from the Bab Assiba neighborhood who had played a key role from the
first days of the uprising encouraging people to demonstrate and maintaining
discipline over the armed groups. "We wanted him to talk to the crowd because
the people of Homs love him and they will obey him," an HRC official told
me. "But the guy on the laptop said first I want to ask the coordinator
(Abu Yasir) and the coordinator said no we don't want him, we want Arur, so
Arur spoke to the crowd." He complained that in Homs too many of the media
coordinators were in Saudi Arabia.
Unlike
places I visited in Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, in opposition strongholds
the residents do not live in fear of Salafis and there are no armed Salafis
imposing themselves on the population. But the alleged suicide bombings of
December and January in Damascus and February in Aleppo do raise the
possibility that the regime's propaganda will be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
"The more time the revolution extends the Salafis will be stronger,"
one activist told me. "Each month that goes by the movement turns more
Islamic and more radical Islamic. If it had succeeded in April or May of 2011
there would be more civil society."
The
Americans and Europeans assess that the regime was not behind the attacks. A
western official based in Damascus said the bombings were both against
"known staging grounds for mukhabarat and shabiha. Where they gather and
get their assignments. Our defense attache used to see hundreds of mukhabarat
in front of the branch buildings every Friday morning." A senior western
diplomat told me, "The car bombs are a murky matter. If my time in Algiers
and Baghdad is any guide, we may never know the full story." Before the
December 23 attacks a senior western diplomat told me that al Qaeda was in
Syria and he was very worried they might conduct attacks. Syria was a major
source of jihadists and suicide bombers in Iraq, as even Syrian security
officials often admit. It was a transit point for other foreign fighters going
to Iraq. One senior western diplomat worried that veterans of the Anbar
campaign would use their expertise in Syria.
Residents
of Daraa, the suburbs of Damascus, or other opposition strongholds feel like
they live under occupation. Opposition supporters talk about
"occupied" or "liberated" areas. Opposition strongholds
that are "occupied" are surrounded and divided by checkpoints.
Security and soldiers demand identity cards from passers by, ask men to get out
of their vehicles, enter bus and check the identity cards of all men on the
bus, conduct armed patrols through neighborhoods, kick down doors, and arrest
military age men. I was reminded of the feeling I had in Palestine, Iraq,
Afghanistan, and southeast Turkey. While security and soldiers in Syria are not
foreign, they are not local either and often have an Alawite accent. It is
enough to create a sense of occupation. Occupation is a major cause of suicide
attacks. On Fridays, which is when the suicide attacks occurred, security men
gather in large groups at the same places every week so they can chase
demonstrators, beat them, and shoot at them. They are a tempting target, easy
and unprotected. While Syria is indeed a security state, its security apparatus
has been overwhelmed lately and it is very easy to smuggle anything or anybody
into and around the country.
One
colonel from the political security branch complained that before their primary
job was to prevent al Qaeda activity but now they allocated all their resources
to repressing activists and responding to the armed opposition. Between 2005
and 2008, while I was researching my book "Aftermath" jihadi Salafis
in Jordan and Lebanon from the Zarqawi network told me the final battle would
be in Sham, the classical name for Syria. They hated Alawites. They are an
experienced bunch who would support suicide bombings against security forces
working for a regime they could describe as infidel who attacked people coming
out of mosques. As the crackdown increases, as the local opposition's sense of
abandonment by the outside world increases, and the voices calling for jihad
get louder, there will likely be more radicalization.
-This article was published in Foreign Policy on 08/03/2012
-Nir Rosen, author of "Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America's
Wars in the Muslim World," spent four months in Syria reporting on the
uprising for al Jazeera
