From Syria with Hate

About two weeks ago, seemingly out of the blue, an army of Sunni Islamists and fellow travellers spilled out of Syria’s Idlib region.  Their offensive met with little resistance – the ‘official’ Syrian Army (whose soldiers are majority Sunni, too) simply disintegrated.  The regime of Bashar Al-Assad fell like a house of cards, with a speed nobody (including yours truly) foresaw.

If anything, this shows how poor our understanding of the Middle East is: even people from the region, who are carefully following events, struggle to predict them; let alone the hapless West.

But we can at least analyse things post-factum, trying to make some sense of what transpired.

Reactions from the West

First, let’s dispose of the bombastic, ridiculous statements released by ignorant and stupid Western ‘leaders’.  French President Emmanuel Macron is a typical specimen from that sorry pack.  Mr. Macron was among the first Western politicians to weigh in on Syria, already on 8 December:

“The barbaric state has fallen. At last.

I pay tribute to the Syrian people, to their courage, to their patience. In this moment of uncertainty, I send them my wishes for peace, freedom, and unity.

France will remain committed to the security of all in the Middle East.”

Someone needs to break it to Mr. Macron: France has long ceased to be a great power; she no longer rules colonies in the Middle East.  Even while it was a great power, it proved quite unable to defend herself, let alone others.  So that bombastic commitment “to the security of all” sounds decidedly hollow.  Even assuming that Macron – who is despised by a majority in his own decaying country – could speak in her name.

Not the sharpest tool in the shed...

It’s worth paying attention, however, to another part of Mr. Macron’s post – the one praising “the Syrian people”.  Firstly, because it’s a deceitful attempt to portray a change of regime based on military might as some sort of popular uprising.  Secondly, because it’s unclear which part of “the Syrian people” is Mr. Macron talking about.  Is it the Kurds in the North-East?  The Druze in the South?  The Alawis in the North-West?  The long-suffering Christians, who actually supported “[t]he barbaric state” of the Assads – as they saw tyranny as preferable to extinction?  Or was Macron referring to the Sunni majority, which spawned a variety of jihadi groups – including the one that just rose to power in Damascus?  If they were able to voice their opinions in safety (for them and their family), some parts of “the Syrian people” would express immense joy and jubilation at the fall of the Assad regime; others, however, would show concern and even fear.

But I may be slightly unfair here by singling out Macron.  He is just the most ridiculous of the lot – but others (including US President Biden and UK Prime Minister Starmer) made similar and equally hollow, meaningless, even deceitful comments.

 

The Syrian people

20-odd years ago, the West’s ‘understanding’ of Iraq was shaped to a large extent by Iraqi expats such as Ahmad Chalabi, who painted a fake picture of their country – using colours they knew were fashionable in the West.  Including similar claims about ‘the Iraqi people’.  The West learned the hard way that the Iraqi reality was utterly different from those self-serving pictures.

Shouldn’t that learning be applied to Syria?  Or should the West commit the same mistakes again – allow its military and/or its economic might and/or its moral support be used in the service of yet another ignoble ‘cause’?

The Syrian reality is that, by and large, there is no “Syrian people”.  Like Iraq and Lebanon, ‘modern’ Syria is an invented country – cut by British and French colonialists out of whole cloth.

And – also like Iraq and Lebanon – the territory of ‘Syria’ is home to a variety of people, differing by ethnicity and faith.  Even the hapless BBC found it necessary to remark:

“While Sunni Arabs are the dominant ethnic and religious group in Syria, the country is notably diverse, with a range of minority groups including Shia Alawites, of which the ousted president Bashar al-Assad is a member, Kurds, Christians, Druze, Turkmen and Ismailis, in addition to other small groups.”

The term ‘diversity’ may sound comfortingly positive to Western ears.  But the Middle Eastern reality is that ‘diversity’ translates into sectarian division and lack of national cohesion.

Ethno-religious map of Syria

In Syria, eight decades of independence (more than five of them under the Assads) failed to forge a ‘Syrian’ national identity.  Ask the Kurds whether their allegiance is to a ‘Syrian state’ ruled from Damascus – or to other Kurds, like the ones enjoying a great deal of autonomy in Iraq, or the ones struggling under oppression in Turkey.  Ask the Druze or the Christians if they trust a ‘Syrian’ government (any Syrian government – let alone a Sunni Islamist one) to respect and preserve ‘diversity’.

Yes, the “barbaric state” of the Assads was hated by many in Syria – and with good reason.  But no, “the Syrian people” had little to do with the recent change of regime.

 

So what the hell happened?

Those who don’t know history, are condemned to repeat it.  For three decades, Syria has been held together in the iron grip of a ruthless tyrant – Hafez Al-Assad.  But Bashar Al-Assad, his son and successor, was widely viewed as an epigone.  His perceived weakness emboldened internal opponents and attracted the (initially covert, then blatant) interference of ‘neighbours’ such as Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

Faced with an extensive insurrection that threatened to overwhelm those forces still loyal to him, Bashar was propped up by Iran and Russia.  The former supplied ground troops (via the Lebanese Hizb’ullah and various Shia militias), the latter air support.  They differed also in terms of interests: Iran viewed Syria as a land bridge to Lebanon and through it to Israel; Russia wanted to preserve its military bases on the Syrian coast – its only remaining foothold in the Middle East.

With Russian and Iranian support, Assad re-established control over the country’s largest cities and its most populous parts.

Worried by Shia Iran’s expanding influence, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf emirates lavished funds on a plethora of Sunni Islamist organisations, often at odds with each other, but all of them opposed to the Assad regime.

The West also intervened in Syria, deploying air operations and special forces, both against the Assad regime and against ISIS.  The US armed and funded a local Kurdish-led militia – the Syrian Democratic Forces.  The SDF fought ISIS and achieved control of the majority Kurdish areas in the North and North-East.

In turn, Turkey worried that its own restive Kurdish minority might join their brothers just across the border – demanding autonomy and, potentially, independence.  Its military (plus Turkish-sponsored Syrian militias) established control of a 20-mile wide ‘buffer zone’ inside Syria’s border with Turkey – a ‘buffer’ the size of Lancashire.

Responding to the Iran-sponsored encroachment, Israel launched hundreds of aerial bombardments on Syrian territory, targeting Islamic Republic’s military installations and personnel, as well as assets involved in supplying weapons to Hizb’ullah in Lebanon.

Add to the dry paragraphs above lots and lots of human suffering.  Half a million dead – many of them women and children.  Many more maimed.  Widespread hunger and economic deprivation, abysmal lack of healthcare, collapse of children’s education.  More than 12 million Syrians (i.e., more than half of the population) displaced from their homes, of which almost 5.5 million (roughly a quarter of the population) in neighbouring countries and overseas.

But all this is history.  Until a couple of weeks ago, it was clear to everybody that Assad won and was there to stay.  So unbreakable seemed his grip on the country, that there were voices in the West advocating ‘bringing him back from the cold’ in diplomatic terms – since the world would have to work with him for many years to come…

So why the sudden collapse?

Most commentators attribute it to the lack of military support from the two allies – Russia and Iran.  Russia is busy fighting in Ukraine, while Iran’s main ‘tool’ in Syria – Lebanon’s Hizb’ullah – is licking the many wounds inflicted by Israel.

Or so the story goes.  Frankly, this sounds utterly unconvincing to me.  There are Russian planes at the Hmeimim base on the Syrian coast – and they’re not bombing Ukraine.  Before the recent ceasefire, Hizb’ullah still had enough forces to fight the IDF – so surely those forces could now be deployed in Syria?

And while complete abandonment by allies may explain Assad’s downfall, it does not explain the lightning speed of that defeat.  After all, before the Iranian and Russian intervention Assad was gradually losing ground – but his regime did not crash down within days.

As for the main rebel force – The Organisation for the Liberation of Levant (Arabic: Ha’yat Tahrir al-Sham or HTS) – it is not a new movement.  It was established almost 8 years ago (almost an eternity in terms of Syria’s volatile politics) through the merger of even older groups.  Since then, it established control over the Idlib region – in the north-western corner of Syria, not far from Aleppo – but until recently showed little appetite for a frontal fight with the regime.  What changed?

 

The Turkish connection

In the absence of democracy, power springs from the barrel of the gun.  That means men, money and weapons.  In the Middle East, men are moved by ideologies – and there are plenty of them sloshing around.  Most Arabs are observant Muslims and many of them can – with relative ease – be persuaded to join Islamist ‘causes’.  But while beliefs and ideas can send them to forge jihad, they still expect their leaders to ‘take care of them’ from a material perspective.  Even believers have to make a living; families left at home need to be provided for; and generous compensation is expected for property damage and other losses incurred by the valiant mujahideen.

And then there’s weapons.  Assault rifles are not hard to find in the Middle East – though they (and attending ammunition) still have to be procured and paid for.  A rifle, a hand grenade, even a humble knife may be enough for martyrdom; but the leaders want power – and these days it’s hard to win a war with such weapons, no matter how uplifted one is by the spirit of jihad.  We’re talking machine guns, cannon and missiles – sometimes even drones.  Not to mention vehicles – from the humble motorbike to cars, pickup trucks and even light armour.  There’s a market for all that, yes – but not enough to equip an army.  Only a state can provide that.

So what state equipped HTS – to the point of causing the Syrian Army to largely disperse after a few skirmishes, rather than facing it?

Let’s ask the same question in a different way: what country, just days after HTS conquered Damascus, called on the UN to remove the group’s designation as a terror organisation?  You got it – it was Turkey!

Turkey’s increasingly autocratic leader Erdogan – himself an Islamist, ideologically close to the Muslim Brotherhood – harbours a longing for the old Ottoman world order, much as Putin dreams of a reborn USSR.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan gives a speech during the celebrations of the 563rd anniversary of Istanbul's conquest by Ottoman Turks. On May 29, 1453, Sultan Mehmed II conquered Istanbul, then called Constantinople. The conquest transformed the city, once the heart of the Byzantine realm, into the capital of the new Ottoman Empire. (Photo by Kayhan Ozer/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

Of course, Turkey and its sponsored militias clashed with HTS in the past; but it is hardly unusual – certainly in the Middle East – for past adversaries to become allies, especially when they discover some shared interests.

Turkey’s involvement can explain a few other mysteries.  For instance – why were Iran and Russia so quick to abandon their faithful ally Assad in his hour of need?  And how come that no Russian soldiers, no Iranian-sponsored militiamen and no IRGC ‘advisers’ were captured by the rebels – to be publicly lynched by mobs thirsty for revenge?  How come that the Damascus embassies of neither Russia nor Iran were invaded, looted and set on fire – as usually happens in this sort of ‘revolution’?

Is it that the HTS fighters are so generous in victory that they decided to let bygones be bygones?  Or is it that two deals were actually (and secretly) made: one between Turkey and HTS, the other involving Turkey, Russia and Iran?

Both Russia and Iran are under Western sanctions and desperately in need of allies.  Neither Russia nor Iran are interested in Syria per se, but in its narrow utility: Russia wants to maintain its military bases; Iran wants a land bridge to Lebanon.  Both things that the HTS can afford to grant, in return for Turkish support, plus Russian and Iranian non-interference.

No, Mr. Macron: what we have witnessed is not the ‘courageous and patient’ “Syrian people” removing “at last” the “barbarous state”.  What’s just occurred is a regional power with neo-colonial ambitions colluding with two other powers and a local agent to further their respective interests.

Under Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey is increasingly adventurous, aggressive and overbearing.  That this Islamist ideologue with a hanker for dictatorship also controls an impressive arsenal of Nato weaponry shouldn’t make anyone’s sleep easier.

No this is very unlikely to bring “security of all in the Middle East” – with all due respect to France’s generous ‘commitments’.  If it is allowed to continue unopposed, Turkey’s lunge into the Levant is likely to end up in war and strife on a scale yet hard to fathom.

As for the “Syrian people,” they just exchanged one bloody, murderous tyrant for another – at least as bad and potentially even worse.

Make no mistake: HTS is not a ‘Syrian nationalist’ movement – as the BBC and other hapless Western outlets want to believe.  It’s not ‘just’ the group’s past affiliations with ISIS and Al-Qaeda; it’s not ‘just’ the acts that ‘earned’ them the terrorism listing in the first place.  No, it’s in the name: the ‘S’ in HTS does not stand for ‘Syria,’ but for ‘al-Sham’ – a term loaded with almost mythological significance in the Middle East.  This is the same ‘S’ as the second ‘S’ in ISIS.

The recently Islamised Arabs who conquered the area in the 7^th century CE called it بِلَاد الشَّام (Bilad Al-Sham, literally: ‘the Land of the Left Hand’).  They emerged from the Arab Peninsula and – when standing there and facing the rising sun – the Levant is to the left…  Al-Sham was just an internal province within the early Islamic Caliphate – hence its ‘borders’ were not clearly defined.  But it included roughly the territories of modern-day Syria, Lebanon, Israel (including West Bank and Gaza), as well as a large chunk of Jordan.

HTS is not the Organisation for the Liberation of Syria (as some would like to think in the West); its goal – declared in its very name – is to ‘liberate’ the entire Levant.

If your world view is that the entire world will eventually ‘see the light’ and (one way or another) embrace Islam; if your ideal model of society is the Islamic Caliphate of 7^th century CE; then you won’t be put off by foreign and irrelevant concepts such as internationally-recognised borders.  And from that perspective ‘liberation’ doesn’t just include removing the Jewish state and the Western ‘Crusaders’ – but also most Arab regimes, seen as not truly Islamic; ‘liberation’ means returning to the ‘purity’ of 7^th century Islam: its supremacy uncontested, its men dressing in the prescribed way, its women put back in their designated place, its infidels either suitably humble or put to the sword and the various deviations punished as ordained.

Of course, if you’re a clever Islamist, you don’t say things like that in English, or in the hearing of infidels.  No, you’ll assume a moderate, even ‘progressive’ vocabulary.  You’ll talk about bringing back peace and social justice.  You might even force yourself to pronounce the name ‘Israel’ and declare that the Jews have nothing to fear.

You will, of course, talk unctuously to the likes of BBC’s ‘International Editor’ Jeremy Bowen.  Not that it’s difficult: these Western ‘journalists’ are, after all, absolutely clueless: they speak none of the local languages (making them totally dependent on local translators and ‘fixers’) and understand none of the local customs and culture (beyond, at most, having acquired a taste for sweet Arabic coffee).  And they’re not easy to dupe just because they don’t understand when someone lies to them, but because they so desperately want to believe – they end up lying to themselves.  Imbued by a keen desire to ‘please the natives’ (and thus atone for historic wrongs or for their own racist prejudices) they want to show affinity; it comes out as asininity.

BBC's International Editor Jeremy Bowen is paid c. £250,000 a year for onerous jobs such as 'gently interviewing' the likes of Bashar Al-Assad and Abu Muhammed Al-Jawlani.

A case in point: these Western journalists have all been told to refer to the HTS leader by his real name of Ahmed al-Sharaa – and immediately complied.  Most have ‘reported’ this (swapping the ‘nom-de-guerre’ for the ‘real name’) as a sign of the man’s confidence or even as a declaration of peaceful intentions.  It’s much more likely an attempt at dissimulation.

I have yet to read a Western article commenting on the significance of that ‘nom-de-guerre’ – Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani.  In itself, it represents a symbolic ‘return’ to early Islamic tradition, which – for any Islamist – represents ‘the Golden Age’.  ‘Abu Mohammed’ is the traditional ‘kunya’: it means ‘father of Mohammed,’: the bearer of that ‘kunya’ obviously named his firstborn son after the Prophet – itself an unmistakable mark of piety.  The latter part of the name (called ‘nisbah’) is an indication of origin: the late Islamic State ‘caliph’ was called Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi – indicating that he is ‘from Baghdad’.  The late leader of Al-Qaeda was called ‘Al-Zawahiri’ (‘from Zawahir’ – a town in Saudi Arabia).  Al-Masri means ‘from Egypt’, Al-Soodani – from Sudan and so on.  As for the current leader of HTS, his chosen ‘nisbah’ is al-Jawlani (or al-Julani, but not al-Jolani, as incorrectly rendered in the West).  ‘Jawlan’ or ‘Julan’ is the Arabic name for the Golan Heights… 

Ahmed al-Sharaa, alias Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani

The current HTS warlord was born… no, not in Syria and not on the Golan Heights, but in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.  The man the BBC calls ‘a Syrian nationalist’ joined Al-Qaeda in… Iraq – where he fought for a few years alongside another famous terrorist – Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (from Zarqa, a town in Jordan).  He only returned to Syria in 2011 – on an al-Qaeda mission.  Islamists are not nationalists – their homeland is the Umma, ‘the Nation of Islam’.  Still, Abu Mohammed’s family originated from the Golan Heights – and that seemed important enough for Abu Mohammed to change his ‘nisbah’ to Al-Jawlani.  I wonder why?

 

So what should ‘we’ do about Syria?

(By ‘we’ I mean the rest of the world – the West in particular.)

Here’s something my science teachers taught me: before trying to invent a new solution to a problem, have a look around: it may be that somebody has already tried and tested a solution to a similar problem.  Saves you time and embarrassment!

Not so long ago, in the heart of Europe, there was a country called Yugoslavia.  Also an invented name, meaning ‘Land of the Southern Slavs’.  Also created by political interests, out of the shards of an Empire.  Also home to a ‘diversity’ of people, differing by ethnicity, faith and language.  For decades, that fake country was held together in the iron fist of a bloody dictator.  People were talking about ‘the Yugoslav people’…  But then the tyrant died – and it turned out there was no such people.  There were Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croatians, Muslim Bosniaks and Albanians who didn’t quite see eye to eye… and so the civil war began.  People were slaughtered by the thousand; women and girls were gang-raped.  Hundreds of thousands were forced to leave their homes or fled out of justified fear – this was the war that gave the phenomenon the name we use (and sometimes abuse) today: ethnic cleansing.  Foreign powers got involved, as they do – Russia, Turkey, NATO…

Ethno-religious map of Yugoslavia

The war ended only when everybody accepted that there was no Yugoslavia; that Croatians did not wish to be ruled by Serbs, in ‘Yugoslavia,’ but to govern themselves in their own country – Serbia.  The fake ‘Land of the Southern Slavs’ disappeared into history’s ‘failed experiments’ bin and a handful of nation states came into being: Slovenia, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Kosova.  None of those are ‘ethnically pure’ – nor should they be.  There are Croats living as a minority in Serbia and Serbs in Croatia.  But, however wicked in itself (and it was!), the big ethnic cleansing was never reversed – as that was likely to generate more suffering.  Those new nation states have meanwhile by-and-large learned to treat their minorities fairly – since they are minorities and do not threaten to take over and oppress the majority.  They also learned to live in peace with each other and are gradually building something they still hesitate to call friendship.

So why don’t ‘we’ learn from that example?  Why don’t we adopt (or, better still, adapt) a similar solution to a similar problem?  Why is it that – just a few days ago – the European Commission (i.e., the same body that played a role in pacifying ‘Yugoslavia’) was:

“in agreement [with Turkey’s President Erdogan] on the need to preserve Syria's sovereignty and territorial integrity, with a particular focus on creating an inclusive government…”

Now, why should foreigners continue to impose “Syria's sovereignty and territorial integrity” upon “the Syrian people,” rather than allow (nay, encourage and help) those people to choose how they wish to organise and govern themselves?  Why does the EU believe that Kurds and Alawis want less self-determination than Croatians, Bosnians or Kosovar Albanians?  Or does Ursula von der Leyen believe that they deserve it less?

I think, unfortunately, that it’s even worse than that.  Western ‘leaders’ with no sense of history and morals are simply driven by political convenience.  They understand only too well that Turkey was behind the HTS takeover, that’s why Ms. Von der Leyen rushed to Ankara: to try and appease Erdogan, to make sure the EU is ‘on the side of the winner’ – and attempt to get something in return for the EU ‘support’.  That in the process she betrayed “the Syrian people” (along with EU’s own loudly proclaimed principles) is no skin off her hard nose.

And that’s where ‘we’ get it horribly, dreadfully wrong.  Despite their ‘inclusiveness’ and their in-your-face wokeness, too many Western leaders believe – deep inside and not concealed even from themselves – that ‘brown people’ are different; that they have different aspirations, that they don’t crave freedom and identity like ‘we’ do.  That they can be fobbed off with less – for instance made to live in an invented country with an “inclusive government” (like Lebanon, perhaps?)

But people are people.  They are endowed with intelligence and moral sense, whatever the colour of their skin and the shape of their eyes.  From the ruins of Syria, from the misery of Africa and Asia and Latin America, those eyes are watching ‘us’.  From ‘us’ who have already conquered our freedom, they expect righteousness, integrity and hope.  But they see Emmanuel Macron.  They see Ursula von der Leyen standing next to Recep Tayyip Erdogan – and they see through her.  What they see is utter hypocrisy, intellectual dishonesty, callousness and crypto-racism.  No, they don’t like what they see.  And can ‘we’ really blame them??