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Blogs TurcoPundit War in Context Yves Gonzalez       Home Joshua Landis LANDIS IN THE NEWS Greatest Hits Syria Comment Rules SSA       The role of MI6 in Egypt’s decision to go to war against Israel in May 1948 by Meir Zamir  Posted by Chris Solomon on Monday, June 10th, 2019   Egypt’s King Faruq First published in Intelligence and National Security, May 28, 201970 years on from the end of the Arab-Israeli War, new documents shed light on the political intrigue that surrounded the motives of the geopolitical powers in the region. Just as Israel wields influence with the Arab Gulf States in the ongoing crisis with Iran, the 1940s saw the European powers play a role in the pivotal conflict that drastically altered the Middle East for decades to come. In this article, Dr. Meir Zamir, Professor Emeritus of Middle East and Intelligence Studies at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, analyzes the case of Egypt’s decision to go to war against the nascent Jewish state and the influence of the British Empire that laid behind the Egyptian government. – CS

 ABSTRACT David Ben-Gurion, the founder of the State of Israel, repeatedly accused Britain of provoking the Arab states to invade Israel the day after its establishment in May 1948. To date, historians have not found proof of his accusations in British archives. However, evidence may be found in French archives, especially in Syrian and secret British documents obtained by the French secret services, originating from agents who had infiltrated the Syrian government in Damascus and the British Legation in Beirut. This article, based on French, Syrian, Israeli and British sources, argues that under the Labour government, Arabist MI6 officers in the Middle East, in collaboration with the British High Command in Cairo, pursued an alternative policy to that of the Foreign Office. They provoked Egypt’s King Faruq to go to war against Israel without the knowledge or approval of either Prime Minister Clement Attlee or Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, frequently misinforming and misleading them. This watershed research provides details of the goals and modus operandi of those involved in that clandestine plot.

 To read the complete article, visit: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/UbyBtHKfiix7D3Gr9Ygs/full?target=10.1080/02684527.2019.1616389 

 

 

 Share this:EmailFacebookTwitterGoogleReddit   Permalink | Print | 1 comment Categories: Uncategorized     On the Yazidi Mothers of Children Fathered by Jihadists  Posted by Matthew Barber on Thursday, April 4th, 2019  A young Yazidi girl and her little sibling live under a bridge in Dohuk after fleeing Sinjar; photo taken Sept. 2014 by Rawaz Adil Nasser By Matthew Barber

 Yesterday, NPR aired an important and heart-wrenching story from Jane Arraf about Yazidi mothers now freed from IS captivity who are forced to abandon their young jihadist-fathered children. I recommend listening to the entire audio of the segment and not merely reading its transcript.

  

 This story raises a number of important issues that deserve additional discussion.

 Due to certain religious positions and social norms, Yazidi mothers are being made to choose between remaining in captivity or returning to their families in Iraq while leaving their new children behind. As the Genocide began in Aug. 2014, Yazidi women who were enslaved were able to begin giving birth as early as April 2015 to children fathered by jihadist captors or civilian Arab “owners” who had purchased them. (“Fathered” is a strange word to use since the men who initiated these pregnancies—many of whom are now dead—generally gave little thought to serving as fathers.) This means that the children whom Yazidi mothers must choose to remain with or abandon are now up to four years old.

 This is not a new phenomenon in this Genocide, though it is recently becoming more visible. As early as 2015-2016 when I was working in Iraq, I was aware of cases where contact was being successfully maintained between Yazidi rescuers and certain enslaved girls in Mosul, the location of the girls was known, and rescue plans were in place. However, the girls (in the occasional cases I am referring to—not the majority of viable rescues) were refusing to be rescued because they had already given birth to children and did not want to be separated from them. They knew that it would not be possible to return to Yazidi society and keep their children.

 The woman interviewed by Arraf in the NPR piece states: “If I wanted to stay with my son, I would have had to stay with ISIS. I was told they take the children away from their mothers.” Her understanding is correct and her fears justified—many Yazidi mothers have been forced to give up the children they have borne as a result of their enslavement. The numbers of these are more likely around several hundred, however, rather than the thousands proposed by one of the women Arraf interviewed. Additionally, many women have been forced by their families to undergo abortions after being rescued. Rescues began almost as early as the enslavement began, so these abortions have been taking place since the first year of the Genocide. Some women who were pregnant when rescued but too far along in their pregnancy to have safe abortions were made to give up their children after carrying them full term.

 Not All Mothers Want the Same Thing

 In 2016, the Independent reported on the case of a girl who was made to give up her newborn boy after having been rescued. The article did not provide many details as to what happened to the infant, but it gave the sense that the girl viewed the infant as a member of IS and not as her own child.

 This raises another important point: the attitudes and experiences of Yazidi women who have mothered children of jihadists vary. Though more attention is understandably being given to the cases where women do not want to give up their children, it is also the case that some women have not wanted to keep the children that they bore due to rape and enslavement. These women have willingly given the children up when prompted to, have themselves sought out the means by which they could give them up, or have willingly undergone abortions. On the other hand are the women whose experiences parallel those of the woman interviewed by Arraf who was absolutely devastated to abandon her son Ibrahim. Mothers wanting to keep their children have sometimes fought tenaciously to do so, resisting their families and the norms of the Yazidi community; this effort, however, is usually unsuccessful.

 The family is typically the agent of coercion in cases where women who prefer to keep their children are forced to give them up. Children left in Syria are cared for by the PYD. Those given up in Iraq wind up in orphanages administered by the central government in Mosul or Baghdad (see this article and this article).

 The problems facing children fathered by jihadists in Iraq extend far beyond the Yazidi community and the orphanages mentioned above contain children from Sunni mothers and those of other communities. In addition to the dozen or so journalistic articles that have been published on this issue (see examples here and here), a master’s thesis has also been written on children born of rape in Iraq. However, it is important to understand that many aspects of this problem as faced by the Yazidi community are unique and not shared by other communities. This means that calls for the children to simply be accepted into the Yazidi community overlook the range of complexities that belie any straightforward solution.

 Avoidance of the Problem

 This is an issue that the Yazidi community has largely avoided discussing or bringing attention to. Some Yazidis worry that giving attention to the children produced through enslavement will distract from the much larger number of Yazidi children who were kidnapped in 2014 and who remain missing today.

 In response to this tendency, it should be emphasized that looking at the problem of children fathered by jihadists does not necessitate turning away from the Yazidi children who remain missing. We can also understand why resentment would manifest within the Yazidi community when concern suddenly mounts over the children of jihadists while so many Yazidi children remain un-searched for after years of pleading with the international community and Iraqi government to locate and rescue them and so many other aspects of the genocide recovery process remain neglected, unaddressed, and unresolved. Still, I think that it is important for Yazidi leaders to recognize that all human beings deserve care and compassion, and concern for children produced through sexual enslavement does not imply a reduction of concern for the welfare of the kidnapped Yazidi children who remain missing.

 Why Is It Difficult for the Yazidi Community to Accept These Children?

 First of all, Yazidi religious tradition contains doctrinal positions holding that only a person whose parents are both Yazidi can be considered a Yazidi. In other words, if someone has a non-Yazidi parent—whether the father or the mother—they are not a Yazidi.

 This precept is related to the fact that Yazidism does not admit converts—no one who was not born a Yazidi can become a Yazidi. Therefore it is impossible (as Yazidi doctrine is currently formulated) for a child with a non-Yazidi parent to be made a Yazidi and brought into the fold.

 There is historical evidence that this position was not always a feature of Yazidi religion. Sources point to the conversion of non-Yazidis to Yazidism four centuries ago. This would mean that the proscription against in-conversion evolved later in Yazidi history.

 Proscriptions against in-conversion are a trait of a number of religious minorities within Muslim-majority societies. Druze, Alawis, Yazidis, and Iran-based Zoroastrians all developed such positions at some point in their respective histories.

 These proscriptions probably developed in response to Islamic doctrinal positions. Islam does not allow out-conversion and even mandates the death penalty for someone who leaves Islam. This can create a significant degree of discomfort, insecurity, and distress among Muslim families and communities when one of their members leaves Islam—no one wants to have to kill their family member. In such instances, therefore, animosity can be directed against a religious community receiving the convert. This has remained an issue primarily for Christians who, technically, have never instituted a proscription on receiving converts (though in practice they have sometimes avoided receiving converts in Middle Eastern countries out of fear). Instituting proscriptions against accepting converts was a way for minority communities to publicly demonstrate to the Muslim majority that they posed no threat to their religious interests. It’s tantamount to saying: “Not only will we not proselytize you, we will not even accept anyone who attempts to convert to our tradition.” By averring that they presented no competition to Islam, a vulnerable minority could further its own security.

 In the case of the Yazidis, this position evolved into a doctrine involving conceptions of purity of sacred bloodlines that should not be mixed. (This even involves caste and sub-caste groupings within the Yazidi community that are not allowed to intermarry.) This issue has become a problem for Yazidis in the modern era as diaspora communities have grown. Germany contains the largest Yazidi diaspora and some Yazidi men have begun secret families with German women. These men travel back to Iraq to visit the Yazidi community but never bring their wives/children with them. Reform-minded Yazidi intellectuals have proposed some modifications to Yazidi doctrine on this matter, but so far without success.

 Beyond the issue of parentage, a Yazidi—male or female—who has sex with a non-Yazidi is—according to Yazidi doctrine—considered no longer Yazidi. This has to do with the fact that culturally, intercourse and marriage are intertwined in legitimizing each other; a Yazidi who has sex with a non-Yazidi is viewed in the same way as if they had married a non-Yazidi, which, of course, results in their departure from Yazidism.

 This is an area of the tradition that the Yazidi religious establishment had to confront after the Genocide began. Yazidi religious authorities issued a public statement that all enslaved women would be welcomed home as Yazidis and were not to be condemned for the rape that they were in no way responsible for. (This has not meant the end of all stigma and some women returning from enslavement have been denigrated; this largely depends on the emotional culture that varies at the level of the individual family.) It was the scope and public nature of the enslavement crisis that prompted this response from the religious authorities; this was not an isolated instance of rape that could have been hushed up, swept under the rug, or dealt with by shunning as typically happens.

 Though this was an important step of social progress, receiving the children of jihadists into the Yazidi community has been a problem area that has proven too challenging for Yazidi religious authorities to reform. Such a step would: 1) upset the entire formulation of Yazidi identity; 2) dismantle long-established Yazidi religious doctrine; 3) simultaneously result in the opening of the door to in-converts, in turn creating a case for Yazidis who want to marry outside of the community—something the community has not yet been ready to tackle; and 4) potentially create new tensions with the majority Muslim population.

 Beyond all of these deeply embedded and practical problems, it would understandably be difficult for children fathered by the same IS jihadists who tried to exterminate the community to grow up within the Yazidi community with acceptance rather than shame, abuse, and insults. However, the fact that this problem poses unique religious and identity challenges for Yazidis makes it even more difficult for them to accommodate these children than would be the case for another community surviving a genocide or a comparable scenario of wartime sexual violence.

 Pointing this out is in no way meant to excuse or justify the problem; this is merely the reality as it currently stands, which leads to the impossible choice for the mothers profiled in Jane Arraf’s segment.

 Responsibility Does Not Lie Solely With the Yazidis

 While holding in mind all of the limitations described above, it is also imperative to recognize that Islamic religious norms and their impact on social custom and the legal system also carry responsibility in this picture. First of all, even if the Yazidi community were willing to raise these children as Yazidis, the doctrinal position of the Muslim majority holds that any person with a Muslim father is automatically a Muslim. It is, therefore, not only the Yazidis who consider these children to be non-Yazidis.

 The Iraqi state implements this religious position through a long-established practice of refusing to grant a national ID card displaying affiliation with any non-Muslim religion to a person whose father is a Muslim (or even whose mother converted to Islam during the individual’s childhood). In other words, according to legal practice in Iraq, the Yazidis would likely find it impossible to incorporate these children into the Yazidi community even if their own cultural factors did not present impediments to such an option.

 Yazidis speak frequently about women who remain missing even after the liberation of IS-held areas; however, it must be acknowledged that a number of these cases involve women who are choosing the children they have birthed and raised over their own return to Yazidi society.

 Some of these mothers—who do not see a viable future within the Yazidi community while keeping their children—will live the rest of their lives as Muslims and will raise their children as Arabs and Muslims.

 Remaining in their forced marriages could be considered a “choice,” but it is, of course, due to a lack of alternatives. The choices that people must make after all choice has been stripped from them are indeed unthinkable and we must remember who was responsible for this Genocide. In other words, the dilemmas that the Yazidi community is unprepared to tackle were not brought about by Yazidi actions.

 Of course, not all Yazidi women who remain in captivity are doing so by choice and it should be recognized that the end of IS-held territory does not mean the end of Yazidi enslavement. Many women—whether they have given birth to children or not—are kept in situations that still constitute imprisonment, even if they were purchased by ordinary Arab men (i.e. not IS fighters). They can remain trapped in a domestic environment, shielded from knowledge of the outside world, and kept unaware even now that IS rule has been eliminated.

 If in the future these women are rescued, those among them who have given birth to children and raised them for several years will also face the same heartbreaking dilemmas being experienced now by those who are reconnecting with the outside world.

 A Partial Solution

 The result of all of this is the heartbreaking reality that can be heard in the sobs of mothers and children in Arraf’s NPR segment.

 But before blaming the Yazidis for callousness, it should be considered how incredibly difficult it is for a traumatized and displaced people—whose access to education and basic resources is now even worse than had already been the case in their highly provincial context—to tackle these reform problems amid their struggle to survive a genocide.

 Nevertheless, Yazidi leaders should advocate for women who want to keep their children and facilitate their migration to countries where they can raise their children outside of the Yazidi community.

 Western countries can assist in this situation by creating programs to resettle those Yazidi mothers who want to keep their non-Yazidi children, and the Yazidi community should respect the wishes of the women. Whether a woman wants to give up her child for adoption or to keep her child, her decision should be accommodated on an individual basis. The Yazidi Genocide served to rob women of all agency; if their wishes are ignored by their families and community upon their return to so-called “freedom,” the hell of the Genocide merely continues for them. The community must place the welfare of the survivors over its larger concerns regarding its image, norms, and desires to force a return to normalcy.

 Amid the impossible choices being faced by these mothers and the lack of clear solutions to the problem, what must be remembered is that many of these children are anything but unwanted.

 Share this:EmailFacebookTwitterGoogleReddit   Permalink | Print | 1 comment Categories: Women, Yazidis     A look back at Kamal Jumblatt and the Progressive Socialist Party  Posted by Chris Solomon on Saturday, March 16th, 2019   As Syria’s Druze seeks out a balance with the Assad regime, the history of the Lebanese Druze’s Progressive Socialist Party and its leader, Kamal Jumblatt, from the Lebanese Civil War era may yield insights into post-war Syria.  The status of Syria’s Druze community has drifted in and out of the West’s attention during the long slog of the conflict. Talal el-Atrache’s recent article highlighted the precarious situation the Druze in Sweida Province, resting on the frontier of Da’esh, with the only option safeguarding their independence and security by way of the Syrian government. The brutal raid illustrated the fraught nature of civilians in southern Syria. Retaliation came quickly. Pictures circulated on social media showed a capture Da’esh fighter hanged from ruins of a Byzantine church over an arch known as “the gallows.” However, the Syrian Druze have also participated in the Syrian Civil War in organized fighting forces. Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi has highlighted the scope of the Druze Arab Unity Party and its affiliated militia, Saraya al-Tawheed, operations in Syria. In addition, Tamimi discussed the role Druze women have taken on by upon recruitment to pro-regime militias, such as Labawat al-Jabal. 

 Still, the position of the Syrian Druze throughout the war has been desperate, with some youth refusing to join the Syrian army. One young man told AFP in November, “The army is your grave.” Commentary and analysis has long pondered what the future holds in store for Syria’s Druze. Will they gain enhanced political influence or potential ostracization and persecution?   The Druze in wartime continues to be overshadowed by the Levant’s larger geopolitical events. For some insights into how the Druze transitioned from a combatant force into a peace time political entity, a look back at the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) and its militia, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), during the course of the Lebanese Civil War, yields some insights.

  Founding of the Progressive Socialist Party to the 1958 Lebanon Crisis

 Kamal Jumblatt was born in December 1917 to a powerful Druze family with Kurdish origins. His parents had a long history of protecting Druze interests in Lebanon. His father Fouad obtained an administrator post during the period of Ottoman rule. When Fouad was assassinated by a member of the rival Druze Arslan family in 1921, Kamal’s mother Nazira took over as the head of the Jumblatt family. Kamal traveled to France and obtained a degree in psychology and civil education at the Sorbonne University before returning to Lebanon in 1939. He took over as the head of the Jumblatt family in 1943, the year of Lebanon’s independence. He founded the Progressive Socialist Party (al-hizb al-taqadummi al-ishtiraki) in May 1949. The party was officially secular and had a Pan-Arab orientation. After Lebanon’s independence from France, Jumblatt formed a short-lived alliance with Camille Chamoun that brought down the corrupt and unpopular government of President Bechara El-Khoury in the Rosewater Revolution of September 1952.   However, with the Suez Crisis in 1956, regional tensions soon reverberated in Lebanon. Strong differences emerged between Jumblatt and Chamoun and the Druze leader turned towards Egyptian leader Gamal Abdul Nasser who had taken power in Cairo following the Free Officer’s coup in July 1952. Jumblatt strongly supported the Pan-Arabist movements in the region. When Syrian President Adib Shishakli arrived in Lebanon seeking a place of refuge after the anti-Shishakli National Front coalition (which included the Baath Party and Syrian Communists) overthrew him in a coup, Jumblatt’s threats forced the former Syrian strongman to leave for safety overseas in Brazil. This was largely in response to Shishakli’s brutal offensive against the Druze in February 1954.    By the late 1950s, the chasm between Lebanese President Camille Chamoun and Jumblatt reached a boiling point. In April 1957 Chamoun himself had voiced the opinion that reconciliation with Jumblatt was still possible.[i] However, a U.S. Embassy Beirut dispatch from August 1957 showed that the Druze leader had little trust or patience for his government. The dispatch relayed news of a meeting between Jumblatt and embassy staff where he denounced the Chamoun government and accused it of “gangsterism” in the Chouf and warned that his followers would take up arms to kick Chamoun’s “corrupt” local officials out of the area.  Jumblatt added that Lebanon’s internal situation was “deteriorating to the point where only a strong and respected leader like General Chehab could restore law and order to the country.” Furthermore, he believed that Lebanon “must put its own house in order” to meet the external threat posed by the Syrian-Soviet accord.[ii] By the end of that same month, Jumblatt, railed against the government’s arrest of his supporters, and told the Lebanese press that Chamoun was risking pushing the Druze into a “second Hermel,” a reference to the Druze uprising against the French colonial forces some 30 years prior. Defense Minister Majid Arslan, for his part, said, “I believe the law ought to be applied equally to everyone without discrimination as it has already been applied to my own brothers and friends.”[iii] The 1958 clashes ended with the U.S. intervention and Jumblatt soon found himself included in the unity government cabinet of former Lebanese Army General Fuad Chehab.   The Lebanese Civil War 

   Logo of the PSP’s People’s Liberation Army  Prior to the Lebanese Civil War, Jumblatt’s party went a period of renewal and strength. Despite the relative security under the Chehabist era, Lebanon was in the midst of social and political turmoil. From 1965 onward, the Druze-dominated movement had seen its membership increase from working class and the economically disenfranchised segments of Lebanese society, largely Druze and Shia, but also contained some Lebanese Sunni Muslims. It was in this climate that Jumblatt’s PSP had essentially positioned itself as an “agent of change.” In addition, the PSP also saw the Baath Party’s successful power grabs in Iraq and Syria and recognized the anti-imperialist sentiments popular in the region as a harbinger for Lebanon.[iv]   However, it was the alliance with the Palestinians that made the PSP the dominant power broker on the Lebanese left. In 1969, Jumblatt, in his role as Lebanon’s Interior Minister, legalized a group of radical leftist and nationalist political parties to allow them back into Lebanese politics. With the military might of the well-armed and politically assertive PLO fully behind it, Jumblatt’s PSP fastened itself in the conflict as the vanguard of the Lebanese National Movement (LNM). This coalition of largely leftist and revolutionary parties faced off against the Christian and conservative elements of the Lebanese political elite. A series of clashes, massacres and retaliations escalated into open warfare in April 1975. Although often described as a sectarian conflict, the Lebanese Civil War, at least in its early phases, had strong ideological undercurrents that transcended sect and ethnicity.   The PSP’s armed wing was known as the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Some sources put the total number of armed fighters in the PLA at 3,000. Although the party was staunchly secular, the PLA is typically described as one of the largest and most powerful sectarian armies in the civil war era. The militia is usually described as mainly composed of Druze and Shia recruits, with the latter effort occasionally put the PLA in conflict with the Amal militia of Imam Musa al-Sadr.[v]  After the LNM’s secured a series of victories against the Christian Lebanese Forces, Syria’s late President Hafez al-Assad grew wary of the rising power of the LNM, and feared it would threaten the integrity of the Lebanese state if the PLO was able to secure outright power on the Lebanese battlefield. He felt this would undermine Syria’s own influence in Lebanon and control over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In December 1975, Assad notified the Lebanese combatants that he would “strike anyone who broke the peace.”   Patrick Seale wrote that Jumblatt was “a genuine man of the left,” adding, “He had early befriended the Palestinians, proclaimed himself a Nasserist, enjoyed cordial relations with Moscow, and from the late 1960s onward had gathered together a vast constituency of Arab nationalists and radicals of all sorts. And by the spring of 1976, as his allies besieged the strongholds of his old Maronite rivals, he scented victory.”[vi] However, for Assad, this could not stand. In his view, the LMN was positioning Lebanon into a state of partition, which played directly into the geopolitical designs of Israel. After the Syrian military intervention in Lebanon in 1976, Jumblatt traveled to Damascus and endured a tense meeting with Assad. No agreement between the two was reached. Assad asserted that Jumblatt allegedly said he wanted to destroy the entire Lebanese confessional system. However, His son Walid later relayed that his father knew about Assad’s designs to divide the warring Lebanese factions and conquer Lebanon.     In early 1977, he traveled to Paris and met with French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. There he received promises of international support for Lebanon. Afterwards, he went to Cairo to hold court with Anwar Sadat, who had fallen out with Assad following the Arab’s defeat in the 1973 October War (Yom Kippur War). The Egyptian leader urged Jumblatt to stay in Cairo and allegedly warned him of an assassination plot.[vii] 

   October 25, 1975 – The Lebanese National Movement announces the end of the fighting in the first phase of the Lebanese Civil War. Kamal Jumblatt (center) is pictured with the SSNP’s Inaam Raad (left), along with Muhsin Ibrahim from the Communist Action Organization in Lebanon, and Anwar al-Fatayri of the Progressive Socialist Party.   On the path of his martyrdom, our banners will remain fluttering. 1984. Kamal Jumblatt was killed by unknown gunmen on March 16, 1977 while traveling to his home in Mukhtara. Apparently he had sought to establish his own autonomous administrative region in the Chouf. Jumblatt had been targeted for assassination earlier in December 1976 with a car bomb, which he accused the Syrian-backed Saiqa militia of being behind the attempt.[viii] Lebanese Communist Party leader George Hawi claimed in a 2005 interview that it was Assad’s brother, Rifaat al-Assad, who was responsible for the assassination.[ix] Others have suggested it was likely a botched kidnapping attempt. The exact details of Jumblatt’s assassination were never fully investigated by the Lebanese government and to this day, like many other crimes of the civil war era, the murder remains unsolved. However, there was a general consensus that the Syrian Air Force Intelligence was behind the incident. 

  The Martyrs of the Progressive Socialist Party in the Aley Region, 1983  Following Kamal Jumblatt’s death, Walid took over as the head of the PSP. The party and the civil war’s sectarian dimension became dramatically more distinct during this period. The Washington Post reported the cries of revenge by the Druze women at Jumblatt’s funeral, as well as the celebratory gunfire in the Christian sectors of East Beirut.[x] The impact of his death was felt particularly hard by the Palestinians. The Guardian quoted the late Yasser Arafat in 1977 saying, “It’s a tragedy. For us, Jumblatt was the equivalent of several armies fighting on our side.”[xi] The PSP engaged in brutal fighting with the Lebanese Forces in the so-called Mountain War from 1983-1984. The Lebanese Army joined with the Christian militias in an attempt to gain control over the predominantly Druze Chouf district.[xii] The PSP’s militia remained active in the conflict until the conclusion of the war, participating even in the final battles where the pro-Syrian forces routed General Michel Aoun’s troops holed up in the Baabda Palace during the so-called Liberation War. Aoun then left for his exile in France. Following the Taif Agreement, the PLA largely demobilized and entered the newly formed Lebanese Armed Forces and government security services. However, some elements of the PLA stayed on, participating in armed operations against the Israeli Defense Forces occupying southern Lebanon until the latter pulled out in 2000.  Nizar Hassan of the Lebanese Politics Podcast explained how Kamal Jumblatt’s life still lingers in Lebanese society 42 years after his assassination, “The essence of Kamal Jumblatt’s legacy on the PSP is that he represents the intellectual (and in a way spiritual) icon whose ideas and quality shall not be questioned. He is the figure to which all can pledge allegiance and about which they can express nostalgia. It is the hero that they never had ever since, a hero who is seen as a dreamer and visionary who carried the ideals of secularism, humanism and socialism, and beyond all a good and pure man. This is especially relevant because his son and successor Walid represents the other kind of qualities of the Za’eem; mainly political pragmatism and a focus on protecting the Druze and maximizing their share of social surplus. Another aspect of his legacy is the institutions that he created to ensure the party’s continuity and social dominance, which are arguably as powerful today as they ever were.”

  March 16, 1985, Pledge and loyalty.    A PSP militia fighter greets a member of Amal as a Syrian soldier looks on.  Note the faction insignia on the shoulders.  Post-war politics

 The fraught nature of commemorating Lebanon’s war martyrs was highlighted by Robert Fisk during the 40th anniversary of Kamal Jumblatt’s death. He noted that Walid has made every effort to warn against the bloody sectarian reprisals that followed his father’s assassination. Walid told Fisk in 2017, “He was trying to get rid of [Lebanon’s sectarian system] because the Muslims and Druze were not equal partners in the system. My father tried to do this peacefully. The elite of the Christians were with him. But the dream of a non-sectarian Lebanon was killed with him on the same day he died.”[xiii]  In 2005, Walid and the Lebanese Baath Party exchanged accusations over the death of PSP military official Anwar Fatayri, who was killed in 1989, after Walid had tasked him with pursuing reconciliation.[xiv] Ultimately, Jumblatt ended up shunning the Syrians in the post-war period. After the 2005 assassination of Rafik Hariri, the PSP became a part of the anti-Syrian March 14th Alliance. 

 Nazih Richani, the author of Dilemmas of Democracy and Political Parties in Sectarian Societies: The Case of the Progressive Socialist Party of Lebanon 1949-1996, told Syria Comment Walid’s anti-Syrian positions were rooted in the assassination of his father, along with Rafik Hariri, and added, “Walid’s perception that Pax-Americana was eminent and that a ‘New Middle East’ was about to happen in the wake of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. However, I think he miscalculated the geopolitical, regional, and global conditions and this drove him to the camp opposing Syria.”

  A pledge is a pledge, 1981  

 Walid’s son Taymour has taken over after the official head of the party. However, it is Walid who still retains control behind the scenes. Taymour has indicated to the press that he has a distain for the feudal brand of Lebanese politics.[xv] Nevertheless, the third generation of Jumblatts look set to continue on at the helm of the PSP. At a memorial commemorating Kamal’s 1977 assassination, Walid told Taymour, “Walk forward with your head held high, and carry the legacy of your grandfather.”[xvi] Hassan touched on how the PSP had to reorganize in Lebanon’s post-war politics, “Unsurprisingly, the civil war gradually destroyed the ‘political party’ aspect of the PSP and empowered the sectarian militia character…[however,] the last few years have seen a conscious effort to resurrect the PSP as a fully functional political party (similar to what Samir Geagea did with the Lebanese Forces), as opposed to a one-man show. This is however is very unlikely to make any significant change as Taymour, Walid’s son who possesses none of the requirements for leadership, was handed the throne without any democratic process and in contrast with Walid’s insistence in the past that he is against ‘political inheritance’ and would encourage internal elections for new leadership.” Still the PSP continues to be plagued with the lasting stigma of being a relic of the civil war’s sectarian character. One Syrian Social Nationalist named Elijah said, “Kamal Jumblatt was a man of principles and ideology, who did not sell himself to the highest bidder, as a Syrian Social Nationalist I respect that, even if I disagree with him.” He went on to lament the current state of the PSP, “For a party that is so progressive and socialist, they ended up representing Druze as only a sect, like most of the other Lebanese parties, and they are today a shallow image of what they used to be.”  Richani said, “Since 1977, in spite that the PSP’s ideology remains secular, conflict dynamics in a vertically divided society proved to be a formidable challenge. The secto-political system of representation that was engineered in the 19th century by colonial powers (France, the British, and the Ottomans) vying for influence was further reinforced by the French with the 1943 constitution. This in turn was consolidated with the Taif Accord of 1990. Certainly the objective conditions played a significant role in transforming the PSP into a predominatly sectarian-based group. But agency, like everything in history, played an equally important role.” 

  The PSP’s “reluctant heir” shares a strong resemblance to his grandfather  Hassan said, “The PSP today is a sectarian party that maintains social dominance through a variety of mechanisms, but most important is the clientelist relationship between supporters and the Jumblatt family. This has two dimensions: the resources offered directly in return for allegiance (such as jobs, healthcare support or material assistance) and the influence on the distribution of state’s resources (most importantly jobs, but also access to healthcare and bringing in state investments into the Druze areas). I can say that it is not individuals that support Jumblatt, it is the communities. The communities support Jumblatt and avoid any confrontation with him because they are worried about not being supported in the future. So the basis of support is largely material. On the other hand, there are the social-psychological aspects, such as the inherited sense of love and affiliation, the habitual involvement in PSP affiliated civil society organizations from young age, and the legacy of the civil war. The latter is also a major pillar of Jumblatt’s legitimacy: there is a perception that Walid Jumblatt offers protection for the Druze. He represents a well-connected, pragmatic, but also courageous figure that would pull strings to avoid harm, and if needed lead the violence when harm is inevitable.”

 The flag of the Lebanese Democratic Party, the PSP’s primary rival within the Lebanese Druze community.  Following the Lebanese parliamentary elections in May 2018, the PSP engaged in violent clashes with its longtime Druze rival, the Lebanese Democratic Party (LDP). An office belonging to the PSP was bombed with an RPG, killed a local PSP volunteer and community activist named Alaa Abi Faraj. LDP head Talal Arslan was accused of harboring fugitive. The issue was later buried between the two sides.[xvii] However, the tension still exists between the PSP and LDP and most recently were manifested in a spat involving Sheikh Nasreddine Al Gharib, a pro-Damascus Lebanese Druze figure who did not approve the journey of Sheikh Naim Hassan, the head of the Druze Spiritual Council, who is aligned with Jumblatt. Subsequently, Sheikh Hassan was barred from entering Syria. Wuel Abu Faour, a leader in the PSP, weighed in on the controversy, saying the move by the Syrian government was “further evidence of the return of the regime to its previous practices of intervention in internal Lebanese affairs.” The LDP defended Damascus. Its spokesperson Jad Haidar responded that Syrian sheikhs were required to obtain special identification for travel to Lebanon.[xviii]Hassan said, “The LDP is incomparable to the PSP in size, power or ideological significance. It has no clear ideological tendency, no hero figure to give its current leadership legitimacy, and no major influence on the state’s resources. In the last election, the number of votes that the LDP leader Talal Arslan received was embarrassing to say the least; and if not for his inflation by the Free Patriotic Movement (an anti-Jumblatt strategy), he would have been largely insignificant on the national political scale. There is also quite a lot of hatred towards Arslan among the pro-Jumblatt communities for his support of the FPM’s major entrance into the politics of majority Druze areas in the last election, as he is seen to contribute to a political strategy that aims to weaken Jumblatt politically and revive sectarian tensions between the Christians and Druze of Mount Lebanon.” The PSP currently has two cabinet positions in Lebanon’s newly formed government. Ayman Choucair, the State Minister for Human Rights Affairs, and has been in parliament since 1992. Choucair previously held other cabinet posts, including Ministry of Human Rights Affairs, Environment, and Agriculture. He was also the PSP’s director for the party’s office in Damascus from 1985 to 1991. During his time as the Minister of Human Rights Affairs, Choucair used his platform to pressure the Lebanese security forces over their treatment of the Syrian refugees in Lebanon. Following the deaths of four Syrian refugees in July 2017, he said, “To preserve the army’s image and prevent any rumors that may be malicious, we ask the relevant leadership and judiciary to open a transparent investigation into…the causes that led to the deaths.”[xix]Another PSP member, Wuel Abu Faour is the Industry Minister.[xx] He was previously the Minister of Health and was first elected to parliament in 2005. Faour lauded Russia’s role in securing the release of the Syrian Druze women who were taken captive by Da’esh in November 2018. He noted that Taymour played a role in working with the Russians on the situation. He said, “These recent events showed that Taymour Jumblatt’s confidence in the Russians was in place especially after the liberation operation. Further discussions about future arrangements related to the Druze’s situation in Syria are under way. A suggestion proposed that the Druze wanted for military service would join the fifth legion led directly by Russia, which is receiving positive feedback among Druze.”[xxi]This relationship between Russia and the PSP comes amid Moscow’s resurgence in the region and in Lebanon. Faour suggested that the ties between Russia and the PSP were both long running and enduring. He explained, “The relation between [the PSP] led by Walid Jumblatt and the Russian Federation is historic. Russians preserve their relations with their historic allies and remember the great role of Kamal Jumblatt, who was awarded with the Order of Lenin among very few figures in the world. They also cherish the common friendship and struggle they share with Walid Jumblatt and want to consolidate the relation with his son Taymour.”[xxii] Hassan shared his thoughts on Taymour’s future leadership of the PSP, “Taymour is far from a competent leader in any person’s mind, including the staunchest supporters of the Jumblatts. But the idea is that he is young and still learning, so we should give him a chance; this was the justification to support him in the 2018 election. It is hard to predict whether the PSP will continue to dominate Druze politics in the future. On one hand, Taymour is a very pragmatic person when it is no longer civil war times and people need visionary change-makers. He does not represent any ideological standing, he does not have a particularly left wing or progressive rhetoric, and we have not seen any impressive leadership moments yet. But on the other, the PSP’s mechanisms of social control and dominance remain very strong, which makes it difficult to imagine how its influence could be declining anytime soon. The major variable to watch in the near future will be the rise of independent political movements in the Druze-majority areas (such as the group LiHaqqi), which is already influencing the PSP and pushing it in a left-progressive direction. This will either end in the PSP adopting the causes of these movements and preventing any potential loss of support to them, or the beginning of the end of feudal politics. The next decade will help us know what to expect.”

 The PSP will proceed into the coming decades in an environment with a heightened sense of community awareness, political activism, and growing desire for reform, equality, and better governance among Lebanon’s younger generation. The legacy of Kamal Jumblatt, frozen in time in 1977, will shape and guide the party. Although the past is present, whether or not the PSP can respond to the future remains to be seen. 

   [i] U.S. Department of State, Embassy Beirut Telegram, April 11, 1957

 [ii] U.S. Department of State, Embassy Beirut Telegram, August 27, 1957

 [iii] U.S. Department of State, Embassy Beirut Telegram, August 28, 1957

 [iv] Nazih Richani, Dilemmas of Democracy and Political Parties in Sectarian Societies: The Case of the Progressive Socialist Party of Lebanon 1949-1996, (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1998), p. 80-81

 [v] Edgar O’Ballance, Civil War in Lebaon, 1975-1992, p. 16

 [vi] Patrick Seale, Asad, The Struggle for the Middle East, p. 280-281

 [vii] Saad Kiwan, Jumblatt’s legacy still echoes in today’s Lebanon, The New Arab, March 22, 2015, https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/comment/2015/3/22/jumblatts-legacy-still-echoes-in-todays-lebanon

 [viii] Edgar O’Bllance, Civil War in Lebanon, 1975-1992, p. 62

 [ix] “George Hawi knew who killed Kamal Jumblatt,” Ya Libnan. June 22, 2005

 [x] Stuart Auerbach, “Jumblatt Buried As His Followers Avenge Murder,” The Washington Post, March 18, 1977, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1977/03/18/jumblatt-buried-as-his-followers-avenge-murder/f858f618-bf32-4e25-b492-9d7043c4925b/?utm_term=.a5e308277118

 [xi] “From the archive, 17 March 1977: Lebanese leftist leader Kamal Jumblatt assassinated,” The Guardian, March 17, 1977, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/17/lebanon-kamal-jumblatt-assassination-archive-1977

 [xii] Nora Boustany, “Druze-Christian Fighting Spreads,” The Washington Post, December 13, 1984, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1984/12/13/druze-christian-fighting-spreads/5a88f929-51e0-4f81-ba4b-bd07176b8e57/?utm_term=.28811272bcff

 [xiii] Robert Fisk, “On the 40th anniversary of Kamal Jumblatt’s death, is trouble brewing again in Lebanon?,” The Independent, March 19, 2017, https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/lebanon-civil-war-walid-jumblatt-christianity-anniversary-a7638021.html

 [xiv] Maher Zeineddine, “Jumblatt: Accusations of Fatayri murder aimed at hindering national reconciliation,” The Daily Star, February 14, 2005, http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Lebanon-News/2005/Feb-14/2588-jumblatt-accusations-of-fatayri-murder-aimed-at-hindering-national-reconciliation.ashx

 [xv] “Five new faces to follow in Lebanon’s parliament,” Agence France-Presse, 

 [xvi] “Lebanon’s Jumblatt affirms son Taymour as political heir,” Middle East Eye, March 19, 2017,  https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/lebanons-jumblatt-affirms-son-taymour-political-heir

 [xvii] “1 killed in post-election clash in Lebanon town,” Xinhua News Agency, May 8, 2018, http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-05/09/c_137164860.htm

 [xviii] Sunniva Rose, “Syrian decision causes controversy among Lebanese Druze,” The National, March 4, 2019, https://www.thenational.ae/world/mena/syrian-decision-causes-controversy-among-lebanese-druze-1.833101

 [xix] “Lebanon’s human rights minister calls for probe into Syrian deaths in custody,” Reuters, July 6, 2017, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lebanon-refugees-syria-minister-idUSKBN19R1FC

 [xx] “Lebanon’s new Cabinet lineup,” The Daily Star, February 1, 2019

 [xxi] “Lebanese MP: Sweida hostages were freed by Russia,” Arab News, November 12, 2018, http://www.arabnews.com/node/1403716/middle-east

 [xxii] Ibid

 Share this:EmailFacebookTwitterGoogleReddit   Permalink | Print | 4 comments Categories: Uncategorized     Nationalism, War, and The Future of The Middle East – by S. Farah  Posted by Joshua on Friday, January 25th, 2019  Nationalism, War, and The Future of The Middle EastBy S. Farahfor Syria Comment – January 25, 2019

  “Nationalism is a great danger for Europe, for all the European countries. In the history of Europe, nationalism has always meant wars, and the last great war started right in the heart of Europe… The real breakthrough, made at the end of World War II is leaving behind nationalism and national egotisms.” This is how Professor Valerio Onida, the former president of Italy’s constitutional court expressed his concern about rising nationalism in Europe in a televised interview. While nationalism as a cause of war in European history has been well established, it has been overlooked when politicians and pundits discuss the Middle East.

 What is Nationalism

 Nationalism is the political movement that rose in Europe in the 18th century that led to the emergence of the nation-state. Before nationalism people did not give their loyalty to the nation-state but to other, different forms of political organization: the city-state, the feudal fief and its lord, the dynastic empire, or the religious group. 

 Broadly speaking, two types of nationalism emerged from Europe – propositional nationalism in Western Europe and ethnic nationalism in Eastern Europe. Propositional nationalism, also referred to as civic nationalism, is an inclusive form of nationalism based on individual rights and the values of freedom, liberty and equality. The oldest form of propositional nationalism is French nationalism, which is rooted in the French republican ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity. The French model of citizenship is linked to belonging to universal republican institutions, not to a specific identity or religion. When granting full citizenship to Jews during the French Revolution, the Count of Clermont Tonnerre told the National Assembly, “We should grant everything to Jews as individuals and nothing as a nation.” Classifying people by their ethnicity is illegal in France; no direct census questions can be asked that would determine the exact ethnic, racial or religious makeup of the society. The nation of “liberty, equality, fraternity” treats all people equally with no differentiation. 

 The other form of nationalism that emerged in Eastern Europe is ethnic nationalism; it mines race and history to create politics that sacrifice individual liberty to the will of the majority. An example of this type of nationalism is German nationalism, which claims that the true essence of a nation emerges from history, culture, and ultimately, race. 

 The Olympic Torch-bearer runs through the stadium at the 1936 Berlin Games While forced resettlement and mass killing has happened throughout human history, the emergence of the ethnic nation-state and the attempt to create ethnically homogenous geographic areas in Europe in the 20th century led to ethnic cleansing and genocide—most notably the Holocaust—but additionally, the expulsion of Germans from Polish and Czechoslovak territory, the ethnic cleansing of Bosnian Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbs in Croatia, and the Albanians, and later, Serbians in Kosovo.   

 Prisoners of the German Buchenwald concentration camp Anonymous | AP Embedded in each national movement is a national myth: it might over-dramatize true incidents, omit important historical details, or add details for which there is no evidence. These legends and constructed narratives create imagined communities that give rise to a sense of delusional, inflated self-worth—what Professor Valerio Onida referred to in the opening quote of this article as “national egotism.” The English Nationalists argued that England was the kingdom that, of all the kingdoms in the world, was the most like the kingdom of Jesus Christ. And the French believed that France had a special mission as representative of the most advanced form of western culture. And almost always in every national myth there are stories of victimhood, aggrievement, and a sense of superiority. These national myths, along with irredentism, led Europe into endless wars, culminating in WWII. 

 Nationalism Arrives in the Middle East

 For two thousand years, the Middle East had been ruled by empires: the Roman, the Byzantine, and the successive Islamic empires, all culminating in 400 years of Ottoman rule. A multitude of cultures lived side by side, while people and ideas traveled freely across these vast polyglot empires. By the 19th century, European ideas of nationalism began to spread across the Middle East. 

 The First Genocide

 Turkish ethnic nationalism came from central and eastern Europe through various channels. Émigré and refugees from Hungry and Poland (as well as Tartar exiles) brought this chauvinistic and illiberal nationalism into the seat of the Ottoman empire. The Armenians and Assyrians were its first victims. The Young Turks, a nationalist movement, in an effort to ‘Turkify’ the new republic, executed a systematic campaign to exterminate the Assyrians and Armenians from eastern Turkey, a plateau they had inhabited for 3,000 years. As many as 1.5 million people were killed in what is today known as the Armenian Genocide. 

 Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their forebears were killed in a 1915-16 genocide by Turkey’s former Ottoman Empire; Turkey has the figure at 500,000 (AFP/Getty) ( AFP/Getty ) Turkey has since been locked into never-ending wars with Kurdish nationalists who themselves aspire to create their own ethno-nationalist state on part of the Turkish state.

  Arab Nationalism Usurps Syrian Patriotism and leads Syria Into Multiple Wars and Economic Sanctions

 Arab nationalism drew inspiration from 19th-century Western ideas. In 1911, intellectuals from throughout the Levant formed an Arab nationalist club in Paris where the first Arab congress took place. Later, Damascus became the coordinating center of the Arab nationalist movement. While the idea did spread to other places like Beirut, Cairo, and Baghdad, nowhere did Arab nationalism inspire so much passion as it did in Syria, which Nasser of Egypt would later refer to as “the beating heart of Arab nationalism.” As Arab nationalists took control of the Syrian government, they preoccupied themselves with the greater Arab cause. In schools across all of Syria, children stood every morning and saluted the Arab nation, and the green map of the vast Arab nation replaced the Syrian map in every classroom. Arab nationalists in Syria were aggrieved and felt betrayed by the West for dividing their nation with the Sykes-Picot Agreement. But the greatest affront to Arab nationalists was the creation of the state of Israel that they viewed as another Western betrayal. Syrians took the mantle of destroying Israel and resisting the Western plots in the region. This overarching goal led Syria into multiple wars and economic sanctions, which they wore as a badge of honor.  

  Arab nationalism asserts that the Arab nation is the group of people who speak Arabic, inhabit the “Arab World,” and who aspire to belong to the same nation. Arabs, Phoenicians, Copts, Assyrians, Berbers, Jews, and all those who live in the designated Arab world and speak Arabic are the people of this great nation. But this diverse group of people and cultures, from the depths of Arabia to the far reaches of North Africa, dress differently, eat different cuisine, and do not share the same history. The purist Arab nationalists insist, however, that language is the strongest foundation for a nation, arguing that the varied languages spoken in the Arabic peninsula, the Levant, and in north Africa, are dialects of the same language. But the looser definition of a dialect states that a dialect should be understood by speakers of other dialects of the same language without formal training, a test that would be difficult to pass for someone in the Levant listening to a person from Morocco. Many successful countries are multilingual, like Switzerland and Singapore, each with four official languages. And despite the fact that all the contiguous countries of Central and South America—with the exception of Brazil—speak the same language, and even share a similar history and religion, none of these countries aspire to be one nation. 

 While Egyptians flirted with Arab nationalism during the Nasser era, they had a deep sense of self as a separate entity, and their loyalty was to Egypt first. The Egyptian flirtation with Arab nationalism came to an end with the Camp David accord. Syrians, indoctrinated with Arab nationalism, viewed the actions of the Egyptian leadership as treasonous and short-sighted. This view of other Arab leaders as stooges of their Western masters was a common theme amongst Arab nationalists in Syria. These nationalists thought that they were the representatives of the pulse and aspiration of the Arab street. This delusion, however, came crashing down during the past eight years of war in Syria: that Arab street was pulseless while Syrians were being killed and their cities destroyed as a part of a brutal regime change operation to punish Syria for its decades of opposing the West’s grand plans and defending the honor of their imagined nation.    

 The Rapture

 Another brand of nationalism, Jewish nationalism or Zionism, began in Eastern Europe; it aimed to establish a homeland for the Jewish people, with its sights set on historic Palestine. As of 1920, a British report showed that there were just over seventy thousand Jewish persons living in British Mandated Palestine, many of whom had arrived in the preceding 30 years. Jewish emigration and colonization of historic Palestine continued primarily by unassimilated Eastern European Jews. In 1948, as Israel declared its independence, Egypt, Jordan and Syria attacked Israel, and in the 10 months of fighting that followed, Israel occupied 60% of Palestinian areas—including West Jerusalem—far beyond the Jewish state allowance proposed by the 1948 Partition Plan.

 This conflict triggered significant demographic change throughout the Middle East. Around 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes in the areas that became Israel and have never been allowed to return. Over the next several decades, Israel occupied more land from its neighbors and continued the colonization of Palestinian land. And almost all the Jewish communities that have colored and enriched much of the Middle East for centuries in cities like Aleppo, Damascus, Baghdad and Cairo vanished, with many emigrating to Israel or the U.S. 

 The refugee camps which sprung up in 1948 became permanent residences in exile Israel’s Declaration of Independence speaks of equal rights for all its citizens; Israeli human rights groups have, however, documented several laws that discriminate against its Palestinian population, which largely still live separately from its Jewish population. Recently, Israel’s legislators passed the Nation State law that says that only Jewish Israelis have the right of self-determination in Israel, ignoring the rights of its Palestinian citizens. The Knesset also voted down the Basic Law Equality bill which proposed that “The State of Israel shall maintain equal political rights amongst all its citizens, without any difference between religions, race and sex”. While many of Israel’s founding fathers were secular, the messianic dimensions of a Jewish state on biblical land was inescapable. Today, the strongest support for Israel in the West comes from Evangelical Christians who believe that for the rapture to occur, the Jews must return to the promised land. 

 The Way Forward

 After WWII, Europeans realized the ills of nationalism and moved to create a new political structure for the continent. They deemphasized borders between their states, allowing for the free movement of people, workers, goods and services, and created supra-national institutions that service the entire European community. The global financial collapse of 2008, however, exposed serious flaws in the structures of the Euro and other weaknesses in the new post- nationalist European project. The Middle East also has to find its way past nationalism to create stability and bring peace to the region. If not in a union similar to the one being attempted in Europe, then perhaps the answer lies in what Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan and Anti Fragile calls ‘fractal localism.’

 The Rapture is but one of many biblical prophecies. Ammiel Alcalay, a poet, in After Jews and Arabs, Remaking Levantine Culture, examines the long and rich relationship between Arabs and Jews, and between the three monotheistic religions in the Levant that predated nationalism. He ends his work by quoting Shmuel Trigano:

 When Isaiah announced “In that day shall Israel be a third with Egypt and with Syria, a blessing in the midst of the land…Blessed be Egypt my people, and Syria the work of my hands, and Israel my inheritance” he was certainly not predicating a union or a fusion into a state, an empire, but the opening into a space for three people passing beyond a stage of belligerency, of the state, the leaping beyond formal boundaries. 

 Mr. Alcalay continues: 

 Somewhere between visions based on the old prophecies and the need for a new covenant, between closed doors and full streets, the magic of old places and the locked rooms without song, a space remains, a space for a poetics and a politics of the possible.

 Share this:EmailFacebookTwitterGoogleReddit   Permalink | Print | 7 comments Categories: Uncategorized     The Plight of the Druze Hostages Held by ISIS & the War on the Islamic State – by Talal el-Atrache  Posted by Joshua on Friday, November 9th, 2018  The plight of the Druze hostages:Why Washington should change its approach in Syria By Talal el-Atrache – @TalalElAtrache For Syria Comment – 8 Nov 2018

 Throughout the Syrian war, the Southern Province of Sweida, in coordination with the Syrian army, had succeeded in protecting itself against the jihadist attacks on the province’s Western border with Deraa, and on the Eastern flank, adjacent to the Syrian Desert.

 

 By the end of summer 2018, as the war seemed to reach an end in Southern Syria, the local paramilitary units were partially demobilized. The Syrian army units stationed in Sweida’s Desert were redeployed to the southwest of Deraa, where they joined the fight against an Isis enclave nestled at the foot of the Israeli controlled Golan Heights.

 The demobilization was a fatal mistake. On July 25, at dawn, hundreds of Isis fighters emerged from the Eastern Desert. They carried out a coordinated attack marked by suicide bombings, shootings, and stabbings targeted mainly at the Eastern villages overlooking the Syrian Desert. The poorly armed local villagers, men and women, from 12 besieged villages fought bravely against the invaders, but six villages succumbed to the fundamentalist group as it carried out door-to-door massacres with the help of some local Bedouins.

 The attack had two objectives. The first was to force the Syrian army to halt its offensive against the Isis enclave in Deraa. The second was for ISIS to provoking a massive exodus from the Druze Mountains.

 Within less than two hours, hundreds of Druze fighters rushed to the targeted areas, killing more than 80 ISIS members. Dozens of Druze fighters from Mount Hermon and from the Damascene suburbs of Jaramana and Ashrafiet Sahnaya arrived that same day and joined the combat. The besieged areas, including the six ambushed villages, were liberated by the end of day, boosting the morale of the local population. More than 250 civilians and local Druze fighters lost their lives and another 250 people were injured, in what has become the bloodiest day for the province since the beginning of the war.

 

 Over the next few days, the army dispatched hundreds of soldiers and armored units, before launching a major counterattack in the Eastern Desert. By September,ISIS had lost more than 3000 square kilometers of land, and became completely encircled in al-Safa hills, a 250 square kilometer volcano in the middle of the desert east of Sweida.

 ISIS lost the Sweida battle but managed to capture 31 Druze hostages: 20 women and 11 children.

 

 The local fighters found and rescued a woman who had managed to escape in the desert, while a second woman, shot in the head by the fundamentalist group, died.

 For the next three months, the hostage issue became the major political, social and humanitarian concern in the Province of Sweida. ISIS conditioned the release of the abductees to the withdrawal of the Syrian army from the Eastern Desert, the neutrality of the Druze, the release ofISIS fighters and their relatives, and the payment of ransom. Damascus and the Druze delegation in charge of the hostage issue systematically rejected ISIS’ conditions, as they would have put the Druze Mountains in harm’s way and strengthened the fundamentalist group. As a result, ISIS killed two of 29 Druze hostages. Muhannad Abou Ammar, a 19 year old university student, was beheaded on August 1.

 

 An older lady, Tharwat Abou Ammar, was shot on October 1. Another 65 year old captive died in custody. The video of the beheading and the pictures of Tharwat’s body covered in blood, published online by ISIS, angered the local population. They were aimed at putting pressure on the government.

 On October 19, six Druze hostages were liberated in exchange for the release of 17 women (ISIS relatives/wives) held by the Syrian government, as well as a dozen Bedouin captives that had been kidnapped by some local Druze fighters in the aftermath of the July 25 attacks.

 This was the first part of a negotiated agreement between Damascus and ISIS that also included a ceasefire in the Eastern Desert of Sweida, where the Syrian army has been fighting ISIS for the last three months with the help of Russian air force. According to some estimates, between 800 and 1000 ISIS fighters are now surrounded in the Safa volcanic field in the desert.

 

 However, the truce collapsed on November 3 in addition to the second part of the deal that stipulated the liberation of seven Druze women and three children in exchange for the release of 35 ISIS relatives. The group demanded the release of 35 fighters from government custody, but was met with rejection since the initial deal only included civilians.

 ISIS has had recent military success in Hajin near the Euphrates city of Deir ez-Zor, where it has killed some 327, US-backed fighters belonging to the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces since the beginning of the military operation there in September. ISIS has regained self-confidence and launched several assaults from the Safa Volcano, before being quickly rebuffed. On November 5, the Syrian army started deploying considerable reinforcements around the volcano, which consists of a plateau of black rocky hills where ISIS has not only been able to successfully resist for more than a month, but even launch deadly attacks against Syrian troops, killing more than 400 Syrian soldiers in the last three months. The Fourth Army Division (one of the toughest) and the Fifth Corps (advised by Russian officers) have deployed alongside Hezbollah units and the Palestine Liberation Army for the upcoming battle against ISIS. The impressive military buildup intimidated ISIS and forced the group to renegotiate.

 On November 8, Syrian State media said that the government troops have freed all remaining Druze hostages kidnapped by ISIS. The army’s operation occurred in a remote area Northeast of Palmyra. However, some analysts believe that the liberation of the women and children was part of a prisoner’s deal exchange.

 Meanwhile, the Syrian army launched a new assault against Isis on Thursday in the Safa hills. According to a member of the Druze delegation in charge of the hostage issue, there have been a few disagreements between the Americans and the Russians who were assisting the Syrians in the negotiations with ISIS. The Russians wanted to transfer all ISIS fighters from the Safa Volcano to the north of the Province of Hama, a region currently controlled by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (ex-Nusra, affiliated to al-Qaeda), while the Americans wanted to gather them in the Hajin region.

 The refusal of Washington to cooperate with the Syrians and the Russians in the battle against ISIS has left a hole through which ISIS has been able to operate. The Americans have forbidden the Syrian army from penetrating within a 55 km radius buffer zone surrounding their military base in al-Tanf, 120 km east of the Safa Volcano. This base sits on the strategic Damascus-Baghdad highway. Damascus has declared this buffer zone problematic as it is preventing the Syrian army from cleaning up the area. The government believes the buffer zone is being used by Isis to move its troops undercover between Northern and Southern Syria, and between Syria and Iraq.

 In Northern Syria, the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have halted their military campaign against Isis after suffering heavy losses in the Hajin area in the Euphrates and following clashes against Turkish forces in Northern Syria. The Kurds, who lead the SDF, are focused on their struggle against the Turkish army after President Erdogan announced his intention to eradicate the SDF.

 This leaves ISIS with enough room for maneuver to regain influence either in the Euphrates or along the Syrian-Iraqi border. The United States’ refusal to cooperate with the Russian and the Syrian armies might be counterproductive with the absence of troops on the ground capable of eradicating Isis.

 Damascus also accuses Washington of training Isis fighters converted to moderate rebels, such as the Pentagon-backed Jaysh Maghawir al Thawra. The Syrian government is asking Washington to either contribute to its anti-Isis campaign in the Syrian Desert, or leave the area and let the Syrian army clean up the desert all the way to the Iraqi border.

 On October 29, Syria’s foreign minister Walid al-Moallem declared that “under the pretext of supporting Syrian Kurds, the U.S. has established bases in the North of Syria and a base in al-Tanf in the South, which are in reality used to reorganize ISIS terrorists to fight the Syrian Arab Army (…). What for? Because they want to prolong the Syrian crisis in Israel’s interests”.

 US officials have declared that al-Tanf base serves as a launching pad for counter ISIS operations, even though the US coalition has never been involved in any effort to eradicate ISIS to the south of the Euphrates Valley, such as when ISIS invaded Palmyra, the suburbs of Damascus, and the Province of Sweida.

 Washington maintains its base in Tanf as leverage in any future negotiations with the Russians. Its strategic goal is to stop Iran from establishing an East-West land corridor stretching from Tehran to Beirut that serves as an arms supply route to Hezbollah.

 After the Syrian army and the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units cleaned ISIS out of most of the desert, the US base in al-Tanf is becoming obsolete as an anti-ISIS tool. Sooner or later, Washington’s choice of maintaining Tanf will risk helping ISIS, rather than hurting it.

 Share this:EmailFacebookTwitterGoogleReddit   Permalink | Print | 8 comments Categories: Uncategorized     Saudi Arabia, Shi’ism and the Illusion of Reform – by Robert G. Rabil  Posted by Joshua on Tuesday, October 30th, 2018  Saudi Arabia, Shi’ism and the Illusion of Reform by Robert G. Rabil – @robertgrabil  October 30, 2019

 The emergence of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is inextricably associated with the Wahhabi school of Islam. The Saudi-Wahhabi pact goes back to the eighteenth century when Sheikh Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab (1703-1792), the founder of the Wahhabi-Salafi school of Islam traveled to Diriya, the stronghold of the Saudi tribe, and struck a deal with its chief. The pact served the interest of both parties by expanding their respective political and religious influence throughout the regions of Najd and Hijaz.

 

 Basing his ideas on the writings of classical Salafi scholar Ibn Taymiyyah , al-Wahhab rejected shirk (idolatry, polytheism) and bid‘ah (heretical religious innovation), which he believed permeated the holy land of Islam. He believed in the return to the authentic ways of the salaf al-salih (pious ancestors) and advocated tawhid (oneness/unity of God) and transcendence of God. He called for unity and the purification of Islam. His puritanical movement became known as the Muwahhidun. Significantly, he justified leveling the charge of takfir (unbelief) on those he considered engaged in shirk. For example, the failure of Muslims to observe all the pillars of Islam was tantamount to committing kufr (unbelief). His definition of tawhid centered on Muslims’s exclusive worship toward God alone. In other words, it was Kufr to associate any other being or thing in the Worship of God.   This constituted for him the divide between Islam and kufr, and between tawhid and shirk. 

 In this respect, the Shi’a, and their offshoot sects such as Alawis, Ismailis, and Zaydis, were considered as the worse of mushrikoun (polytheists) for they have associated worshipping God with venerating the infallible descendants of Prophet Muhammad. More so, Shi’a traditions, among other Islamic and non-Islamic traditions, such as tawassul (supplication), Shafa’a (intercession of prophets and Imams), tabarrruk (seeking of blessings) and ziyara (visiting the tombs of venerated religious figures) only deepened the Wahhabi identification of Shi’ism with polytheism and idolatry. The corollary of this identification made warfare against Shi’ism a Wahhabi religious duty.

 Between the years 1794-1802 the Saudi-Wahhabi movement destroyed many holy shrines in today’s Iraq, including the Prophet Grandson Imam Hussein’s shrine in Karbala in 1802. Imam Hussein’s martyrdom in 680 at the hands of Umayyad Caliph Yazid at Karbala was most formative for Shi’a ideology and tradition. This martyrdom became central to Shi’a identity, tradition, and theology because it epitomized Imam Hussein’s opposition to tyranny, oppression, and the struggle against the chronic injustices of the world.

 During the campaign (1902-1932) of Saudi chief Abd al-Aziz to conquer Najd and Hijaz thousands were killed and maimed, including many Shi’a. In 1927, Wahhabi scholars issued a fatwa (religious edict) calling for the expulsion of Shi’a from al-Ahsa in the Eastern province of Saudi Arabia unless they consented to the destruction of their mosques and their conversion to Wahhabism. This anti-Shi’a religious strand became the official view of the monarchy when King Abd al-Aziz proclaimed the establishment of his kingdom in 1932 and made Wahhabism its official religious establishment.

 Correspondingly, the Shi’a, as a minority in the kingdom comprising around fifteen per cent of the population and residing mostly in the oil-rich Eastern Province, have been religiously and institutionally discriminated against. Their religious customs, including Ashoura commemoration of the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, were forbidden, the publication and distribution of their religious texts were outlawed, their call to prayer banned, and their centers of religious studies closed. No less significant, they were vilified in textbooks.

 The early expression of their grievances was manifested in their heavy participation in the 1950s in the labor riots of the oil fields managed by the Arabian American Oil Company (Aramco). The riots were brutally suppressed by the Saudi National Guard. Subsequently, apparently inspired by the success of the Iranian revolution in 1979, Shi’a demonstrated in the Eastern province. The government violently suppressed the demonstrations, arrested Shi’a leaders and forced a number of Shi’a activists into exile. It was at this time that a cleric Sheikh Hassan al-Saffar, supported by the followers of religious scholar Mohammad al-Shirazi, established the opposition group the Organization of the Islamic Revolution (Munazzamat al-Thawra al-Islamiyya).

 Saudi harsh treatment of their Shi’a community began to change in the 1990s, following the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq and the deployment of American troops to the Kingdom. This change apparently stemmed no less from American deeper involvement in the Middle East than from the failure of both Saudi policy of oppression and Shi’a policy of protestation. Sheikh al-Saffar changed the name of his organization to al-Haraka al-Islahiya (Reform Movement), and in 1993 a leader of the Shiite opposition in exile, Tawfiq al-Sayf, led a large delegation of Shia to meet with King Fahd. Meaningfully, King Fahd conceded to some Shi’a demands including permitting them to practice previously banned religious rites, some Shi’a to return from exile, and to guarantee the safety of those returned. Significantly, the King ordered the revision of a school text book that had referred to the Shi’a as a heterodox sect. The new edition added the Twelver Shiite School of Islam to the four Sunni schools of Islam.

 

 This slow and circumspect yet important transformation in the relationship between the monarchy and its Shi’a community gained momentum following the American liberation of the Shi’a from the yoke of Saddam Hussein’s oppression in 2003. Many Shi’a activists signed a statement, titled “Partners in the Homeland,” and submitted to Crown Prince Abdullah. The statement emphasized the loyalty of the Shiites to the Kingdom and called for their integration into Saudi society by removing institutional and social discrimination against them. Moreover, when the Crown Prince became King in 2005, many Shiite leaders and clerics went to the capital to pledge their allegiance to him. Many Shi’a believed that the new King would turn a new page in his relationship with the Shi’a community at large.

 It’s noteworthy, however, that a minority of Shi’a, including the militant group Hizbollah al-Hijaz, opposed Shi’a engagement with Saudi authorities. The kingdom has designated Hizbollah al-Hijaz as a terrorist organization and blamed it for several terror acts, including the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing. Conversely, many Wahhabi religious scholars maintained their disparaging views of the Shi’a and opposed any rapprochement with them. Even Saudi religious reformer Sheikh Safar al-Hawali disparaged the Shi’a and called the Shi’a Islamist party Hezbollah of Lebanon the party of the devil.

 King Abdullah had to walk a fine line between improving the conditions of the Shi’a, opposing what he saw as Iranian encroachment across the Middle East, and curbing the power of his religious establishment that stood as a hurdle to his reforms. He focused on bolstering the Kingdom’s defenses, enhancing scientific research, fighting al-Qaeda, and curbing the power of the Wahhabi religious establishment as a precondition to enunciate significant reforms. He removed a popular Wahhabi cleric, Sheikh Saad Bin Nasser al-Shathri, from the country’s High Council of Religious Scholars because he criticized the king’s decision to allow male and female researchers to work together in the newly established mixed gender King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. Similarly, he sacked the head of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, whose puritanical agents try to enforce the behavioral application of Islamic law. Significantly, he tried to break the monopoly of the power of Wahhabi clerics within the Council of Senior Scholars, who issue official religious rulings, by including in the 21-member Council representatives of all four schools of Sunni Islam (Shafi’I, Hanbali, Maliki and Hanafi schools of jurisprudence). Though he did not include in the Council any Shi’a cleric, he increased Shi’a representation in the Consultative Assembly of Saudi Arabia.

 Shi’a cleric Sheikh Nimr Nimr.



 Unfortunately, King Abdullah’s reforms not only came to a screeching halt but regressed following the eruption of Arab Revolutions across the Arab world. Protests erupted in the Eastern province few days after widespread protests started in Bahrain on February 14, 2011. The province is only a 30-minute drive across the causeway from Bahrain. In a show of force, the Saudi interior minister Prince Muhammad bin Nayef vowed to crush the protests with an “Iron Fist.” In the following days and months, Saudi authorities clamped down on the protests, killing a number of them, and arresting dozens of them including the preeminent Shi’a cleric Sheikh Nimr Nimr.

 In the meantime, feeling threatened by the swift spread of Arab revolutions, the monarchy felt the need to be further legitimized by the religious establishment. On March 6, 2011 the Council of Senior Scholars issued a fatwa acclaiming the rule of Saudi royals and banning demonstrations. Excerpts of the fatwa read:

 The Council praises Allah Almighty for what He has bestowed upon the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with unity of words and action on the basis of the book of Allah and tradition of the messenger, under the wise leadership of legitimate allegiance… Since the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is based on the Qur’an, Sunnah, the pledge of allegiance, and the necessity of unity and loyalty, then reform should not be by demonstrations and other means and methods that give rise to unrest and divide the community…The Council affirms prohibition of the demonstrations in this country…It is what practiced by the Prophet (peace be upon him) and followed by his companions and their followers.

 Since then, in order to maintain absolute power, the monarchy has renewed its firm commitment to its Faustian pact with the Wahhabi religious establishment. This resolve for maintaining absolute power has taken a critical dimension with the ascension to power in 2015 of King Salman and his son crown prince Muhammad bin Salman, who essentially managed to wield effective power in the kingdom. On January 2, 2016, Sheikh Nimr, along with 47 Saudis, was executed for being convicted of terrorism offences. Sheikh Nimr was a vocal critic of the monarchy. But he was not a terrorist.

 This is the background against which Prince Muhammad launched his so-called campaign of reforms, which have been no more than a window dressing to his attempt at modernizing and controlling the Kingdom. Fundamentally, Muhammad’s reforms have not introduced any systemic change to the Kingdom’s austere social structure and laws. Under the pretext of fighting corruption, he detained dozens of princes and wealthy Saudis so that he could clip their wings and take a hefty portion of their fortune. He arrested the women activists who campaigned for allowing women to drive. He kidnapped Lebanon’s Prime Minister for not being tough enough on Hezbollah. He has waged a brutal war in Yemen initially foregrounded in Wahhabi proselytizing among Zaydi Shi’a. He arrested dissenting scholars. And most recently, he most likely ordered the gruesome dismembering of the journalist Jamal Kashoggi for being critical of his policies.

 Clearly, Prince Muhammad does not tolerate any form of dissent. His absolute power rests on his ability to both check the power of his family members and to maintain the loyalty of the religious establishment. Washington cannot influence the Kingdom’s religious establishment, but it can prod the royal family to remove Prince Muhammad from power in the interest of the welfare and reputation of the Kingdom. In 1964, the royal family forced King Saud to abdicate in response to his blunders. At the same time, the Trump administration should use the inexcusable murder of Kashoggi to persuade the Kingdom to renew the path of slow but steady systemic reform that began under late King Abdullah. As such, Washington can better maintain its strategic relationship with Riyadh. Otherwise, the Trump administration, besides forsaking its moral compass, will definitely make United States complicit in Prince Muhammad’s present and future misfortunes and catastrophes involving Sunni-Shi’a sectarianism and a possible war with Iran instigated as much by Wahhabi theological views of Shi’ism as by geopolitical considerations.

 Robert G. Rabil is a professor of Political Science at Florida Atlantic University. He is the author most recently of The Syrian Refugee Crisis in Lebanon : The Double Tragedy of Refugees and Impacted Host Communities (2016); Salafism in Lebanon : From Apoliticism to Transnational Jihadism (2014); and White Heart (2018). He can be reached @robertgrabil .

 *The views expressed in this article are personal and do not reflect those of Florida Atlantic University.

 *The views expressed in this article are also not the views of Syria Comment, which has consistently argued against US-backed regime-change. It is worth reading Yezid Sayigh’s “The Warior King,” in which it is argued that Mohammed bin Salman will weather the Khashoggi murder, his tightening grip over Saudi security explains why.

  

 Share this:EmailFacebookTwitterGoogleReddit   Permalink | Print | 2 comments Categories: Saudi, US     Interview with Lebanon’s Minister of Refugee Affairs, Mouin Merhebi  Posted by Matthew Barber on Friday, October 26th, 2018  By Michael Gerini

 Residing in the north of Lebanon, Mouin Merhebi is a member of Saad Hariri’s Future Movement. A staunch opponent of Hezbollah and the Assad government, he currently serves as Minister of Refugee Affairs (officially “Minister of State for Displaced Affairs”) in the Hariri government, a position he has held since December of 2016. Though coming into the position with little experience in the matter, Meherbi’s active lobbying on behalf of the refugees and his adamant stance on refugee return has won him the praise of several NGOs and the U.N.

 With the Syrian Civil War seemingly approaching its end, the Minister’s position and the administration of his bureaucracy will become even more important. Though severely strained by possibly over two million Syrian refugees, Lebanese infrastructure and society have managed the crisis well. The next test for Lebanon will be for it to manage the orderly and peaceful transition of Syrians back to their home country.

 Minister Merhebi was kind enough to share his opinions and outlook with me in an interview conducted in Beirut in April of this year. 

 

 There is some disagreement regarding the actual number of Syrian refugees in Lebanon. Some put the number at just over one million, others at two million. I would like to know what is the best count that your ministry has of the number of Syrians actually in your country?

 Well the count is about one million but we have about 500,000 who are not registered. The difference in numbers is due to not having those people in camps. When they came into Lebanon they did not come through official crossings. So that’s why. But according to the U.N. agencies and the UNHCR, the registered are about one million and adjusting for uncounted people in remote areas, we have one to two.

 One to two million?

 So that’s at 1.5 [million].

 Initially, there was a decision made not to put them into camps. Why was that decision made?

 When those people first fled, it was from killings and torture. They were forced into being refugees; they were trying not to be killed, [trying to protect their] families, children. They did not agree with our [Hezbollah-backed] government [which is why they crossed illegally rather than through official border crossings]. So they ran across the border from their cities and we were not prepared, we did not know about it [ahead of time]. We tried to help them individually, not officially, not through our government at that time. It took time to really understand how big the problem was, that the crisis was huge. Later on, all the U.N. agencies, our government, the NGOs, and other nations tried to help. We did not have tents, we had our houses. We put them into our homes just to shelter them. Later on we had internal political problems inside Lebanon. Some of our parties did not want to let those people live in camps. They feared that the same issues that happened with the Palestinians will happen with the Syrians. We are a small country with a small population. We are 4.2 million within 10,452 km2 so you can understand the issue.

 Absolutely. You mentioned the various U.N. agencies that are working with you. It seems that government efforts have been somewhat haphazard. Has the U.N. helped in terms of organizing, not just their own efforts, but government efforts?

 No, the U.N. agencies have not organized government efforts. No. We had some issues stemming from our internal problems. We had to deal with that and it took time. The perception may be such, but really from the first—let me tell you, PM Saad Hariri’s cabinet had resigned and it took six months to get a new cabinet. During these six months we did not do things the right way because we did not have a cabinet at the time. Later on, we got a cabinet with PM Mikati—it was a Hezbollah cabinet. Hezbollah did not want to deal with this issue positively. So myself, I had many problems with this cabinet. I always called on this cabinet to help those people, to build camps for those people so that we could help them in a positive way—most of all to know where those people are living. Sometimes we are not able to send food because we don’t know where they are. Things went much better with the cabinet of PM Salam. And now with this cabinet, we have made a new Ministry for refugees. By the way, we call it “displaced” [in reference to the title “Ministry of State for Displaced Affairs”] because in Lebanon we do not like to [include Syrians within] the same problem as the Palestinians, who since 1948 have been living in Lebanon. But we deal with them [Syrians] as refugees, let me tell you frankly.

 This is different from the Palestinian crisis because the Syrians, unlike the Palestinians, have a country to go back to. It seems that across the political spectrum in Lebanon the intention is to send the Syrians back. Is that the official stance of this Ministry?

 Let me tell you: Regarding the return of the Syrians, they should willingly return under the supervision of U.N. agencies. We will not force those people to return. We cannot guarantee those people’s safety if we [force them to] return them to their country. So they have to decide themselves to return. We are not going to interfere with the situation. We have not made any statements saying that we will force people to go back to Syria. And we will not.

 So you won’t take a more internationally-facilitated return?

 It is a direct responsibility of the U.N. to take action on this issue. So if there are safe places where they can build homes, or build camps for them, it is those refugees’ decision to return and with U.N. help and U.N. cover. We as the government of Lebanon cannot take any forced action towards those people’s return to Syria. We cannot do it. We are a member of the U.N. and we will not do this. There are some major principles and we are abiding by those principles and laws.

 Conversely, that might mean that Lebanon will have to tolerate a large, semi-permanent refugee population from Syria?

 We have been coordinating this issue since 2011. This is an issue of human beings. It’s not an issue of trade or whatever. They are people, like me and you. So you cannot treat them as if you are not aware of this issue or do not know about this issue. We have had a lot of problems with Syrians and Syria used to govern our country. Their soldiers tortured us, their soldiers shot at our cities. Our government was controlled fully by the Syrian government, by Hafez al-Assad and Bashar al-Assad. But this issue is about human beings and we cannot deal with this issue as if we are avenging what they did as torturers and destroyers in Lebanon. These refugees—they did not do this to Lebanon. They are not responsible for what their government did to Lebanon. We are dealing with this issue from a humanitarian side.

 I’m struck by the human face that you are adding to this issue, in contrast to the responses heard from other ministries who only focus on the numbers and talk about the one million, 1.5 million, two million, etc.

 With the Palestinians, yes there are two million, plus some Iraqis. But it is something human, nothing else.

 It’s remarkable that you would take a step back from the numbers when we are talking about two million foreigners, compared with a population of four million.

 Fifty percent or above.

 It’s an impressively large number. And you think that return should be absolutely voluntary?

 We cannot send somebody to be killed or we would be criminals, and we are not criminals. We are not.

 In terms of Lebanon’s future, if a large part of the Syrians stay, what will be their status? Will they ever be integrated into Lebanon?

 No, not at all. This situation will not allow it in any condition. And when things get better in Syria, I think the refugees will be eager to return. Fifty percent of those people are living below $2 per day [inside Lebanon, now]. How can they continue living this way? If they are able to go back to their houses, their lands, to build a new future with new hopes, I’m sure the conditions in Syria will be much better for them. I don’t think there will be a mass of them not willing to return to Syria. If you go and ask a young Syrian student, “what do you want?” He will tell you directly: “I want to go back to my house in Syria, to my land in Syria. I want peace.” That’s it. Let me tell you, those Syrians, I respect them very much. They used to come every Thursday in the afternoon and go back to Syria on Friday afternoon. Do you know why? They used to have demonstrations on Friday after prayer at twelve. The demonstrations used to be finished at four or five o’clock. So they used to send their wives, their children to Lebanon on Thursday to safeguard them. They used to get them back after the demonstrations, just to keep them safe. When we would ask them “Why don’t you stay a little bit, just to be sure there are no shootings or anything?” They would tell us, “Well, we are eager to go back and we cannot keep our lands and our houses from those criminals.” So when you are moving every week for eight months and going back every week, and going back to your house, your village, what do you think about those people? Just a mother taking her children with her—two, three, ten years old, twenty years old—what do you think about those people? Well I have full respect for them. Till now they are thinking about their return; I’m sure they are eager to go back now and not tomorrow.

 And just one final question concerning the future of the region, Lebanon and Syria in particular. Do you think that Syria, post-conflict, can learn lessons from post-conflict Lebanon, with how well this nation is doing comparatively?

 Yes, sure, and everybody should learn from each other and for sure as neighbors we are learning from each other. I think things will go much better when this criminal Bashar al-Assad, this butcher, will be out of Syria, him and his regime, those killers. The Syrians will be able to live in peace, to rebuild Syria. Those people are not Daesh, they are not al-Qaida, and they are for sure not the worst criminal ever on earth: Bashar al-Assad. He killed maybe 500,000 of his people and destroyed all his cities. Now 50% of his people are refugees in other countries. What a shame for everybody, for the world, for the international community. So if we can, if we are able to help them find peace, to enforce peace in Syria, it will be for the best for the region, for the best for the whole world. That’s why we are fighting those butchers and ISIS and al-Qaida. This is the right way, to force peace in Syria and to stop this war, to stop the killing. We are not enabling ISIS or al-Qaida to recruit for their militias if we find a solution for Syria.

 What is needed most of all now is to really find an end for this war, but at the same time to try to help those people. They need help. The Lebanese have a small country with a debt of $75 billion up to now, according to the World Bank. This issue cost Lebanon with a debt of $75 billion about $18 billion as assessed by the World Bank. We cannot really help anymore. The international community should help Lebanon to help these people, which at the same time will help the international community. Without this, we are really going to have significant international problems that will affect the whole world and not only this region. Thank you.

 Absolutely. Thank you.

 ________________________________________

 Michael Gerini is an independent journalist who focuses on Middle Eastern and US politics.

 Share this:EmailFacebookTwitterGoogleReddit   Permalink | Print | 4 comments Categories: Lebanon, Refugees     Idlib: The Game Above the Game – by David W. Lesch  Posted by Joshua on Thursday, September 20th, 2018  David Lesch



 The Game Above the Game by David W. Lesch For Syria Comment – Sept 21, 2018

 The various combatants in and around Idlib seem to have hit the pause button for the time being.  What just a short time ago appeared to be an imminent onslaught by Russian and Iranian supported Syrian government forces to take back one of the last areas outside of the control of Damascus, accompanied by widespread civilian casualties and refugees fleeing the battleground, now has given way to high stakes diplomacy.

 

 The key is Turkey.  The Turks have been the dominant power in northwestern Syria along the border and down through the province of Idlib for a number of years since the fall of Aleppo to the opposition early in the Syrian civil war.  Indeed, in some ways, with Turkey establishing shared power grids, training local police forces, rebuilding and staffing schools, and investing in the local economy, northern Syria functionally looks more like southern Turkey nowadays. This process actually started years before the beginning of the civil war when a honeymoon in relations between the two countries led to heavy Turkish investment in Syria, economic integration, and an expansion of Turkish cultural markers.

 Since the civil war began, however, Ankara has supported the many stripes of the anti-Assad coalition in this part of Syria, including elements of the Free Syrian Army and a plethora of jihadist groups.  At first, Turkey was committed to the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. As it became clear, certainly since the Russian military intervention on behalf of the Syrian government in 2015, that Assad was going to remain in power, Turkey’s objectives in Syria shifted to making sure empowered Kurdish groups, many of whom Ankara has labeled terrorists, were unable to establish autonomous zones, especially along the Turkish-Syrian border. The most powerful Kurdish fighting force has been backed by the US as part of the Syrian Democratic Forces in its attempts to roll back and eliminate the presence of the Islamic State in Syria, a dynamic that has, to say the least, complicated US-Turkish relations.

 Enter Russia—or more to the point, Vladimir Putin.  The Russian president’s foray into Syria has proven to be quite successful in the short term.  He was able to keep Assad in power and, therefore, maintain, indeed significantly enhance, Russian strategic assets in the heartland of the Middle East.  By way of this intervention, he has orchestrated Russia’s return as a major diplomatic player in the region, probably even more so than the US at the moment.  And because the US early on decided to team with the Kurds, who had the best available indigenous fighting force to take on the Islamic State, therefore alienating an increasingly autocratic Turkish President Erdogan, perhaps he could even find the holy grail and pluck a disenchanted Turkey away from the US and NATO and into Russia’s orbit—a potential strategic coup of enormous proportions. As a result, Russian-Turkish relations have greatly improved in recent years after some early hiccups, to the point where Russia, Iran, and Turkey have become the working group in the so-called Astana process, which for several years has monopolized attempts to de-escalate the war in Syria.

 What has emerged is a very tense diplomatic game focusing on Idlib.  Everything would be much easier if Turkey would have just withdrawn from the area.  Certainly, this is what Russia and Syria were hoping for, especially as it appeared the Turks had backed themselves in a corner with no easy way out.  The Syrian government and the Russians would like nothing better than to just batter Idlib into submission, a strategy that has worked elsewhere in the country. But Turkey abandoning Syria was never going to happen. Erdogan has invested too much political capital—and two full-fledged offensives—in northern Syria to just give up.  His domestic position politically is not as solid as it once was, especially as his economy continues to plummet, so admitting defeat by leaving Syria is not an option.

 Perhaps this is why the Syrians and Russians built up their forces in the area and began a targeted aerial assault, i.e. to intimidate Turkey into taking the path of least resistance out of Syria. Instead, it appears that Erdogan, stiffened by the timely support of and tough talk from the US and some of its European allies, has called the Russian bluff.  He has sent more men and materiel to reinforce existing observation posts in Idlib and moved more forces toward the border.

 Erdogan is basically saying the following to Putin:  if there is an all-out Syrian-Russian offensive, Turkish troops will be killed, with possibly a direct Russian-Turkish military confrontation that could even involve the US in support of its recalcitrant NATO ally.  This would all but end Putin’s dream of reeling in Turkey and perforce push Ankara back toward the US—the Kurdish issue notwithstanding.

 Putin blinked.  And now there has been a Russian-Turkish agreement to find another way to resolve the situation in Idlib short of war.  He’s giving Erdogan a face-saving way out of his morass while possibly solidifying his relationship with him.  Somehow Turkey will fudge the separation of legitimate Syrian opposition forces from the jihadists, such as the al-Qaida-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, after which time perhaps there can be a joint effort to eradicate the “terrorists.”  This will be easier said than done as the estimated 10,000 jihadists in Idlib have nowhere to go and will dig in.

 I can’t imagine Assad likes this deal at all, as it consecrates Turkey’s position of influence in the north. He wanted to pummel Idlib and gain more territorial control over his country, but his depleted forces can’t do it without substantial Russian help.  He has to go with the Russian diplomatic game right now, perhaps waiting until it might inevitably breakdown—or until the next UN General Assembly session is over in September, when international diplomacy focuses elsewhere while he incrementally picks away at the edges of Idlib both militarily and through reconciliation agreements. Maybe this is also what the Russians have in mind. They too would like nothing better than to eliminate jihadists in Idlib, a number of whom are Chechen and from other areas in Russia who have caused problems for Moscow in the past.  They want to dig the graves of these hardened jihadists in Syria rather than have them return to Russia.

 Right now, though, the diplomatic games are being played above those in Idlib itself, many of whom are anxiously awaiting their fate—and are at the whim of leaders who have anything but their fate in mind.

 David W. Lesch is a the Ewing Halsell Distinguished Professor of Middle East History at Trinity University in San Antonio, TX and author of the upcoming book, Syria (Polity Press).

 Share this:EmailFacebookTwitterGoogleReddit   Permalink | Print | 9 comments Categories: David Lesch, Russia, Turkey     Loyalty over geography: Re-interpreting the notion of ‘Useful Syria’ — By Matthias Sulz  Posted by Joshua on Thursday, September 6th, 2018  Loyalty over geography: Re-interpreting the notion of ‘Useful Syria’ By Matthias Sulz * For Syria Comment: Sept. 6, 2018  

 As the offensive to reconquer Idlib starts, it is useful to recall that the notion of ‘Useful Syria’ as geographic reference to the population-rich axis of Aleppo-Homs-Damascus, as well as the coastal areas of Latakia and Tartus, does not accurately reflect the regime´s intention of reconquering all of Syria. This makes the Idlib offensive not the end of the civil war, but merely its next stage that will be followed by further regime manoeuvring and fighting to retake the country´s north and east. It makes more sense to reconceptualise ´Useful Syria´ in terms of loyalty, i.e. as reference to the regime’s policies to consolidate its power by rewarding loyalty and punishing ‘betrayal’.

 The term ‘Useful Syria’ was popularised by analysts in July 2015 after a deal between the regime and rebels was struck to end the siege of al-Fuah and Kafraya, two towns in Idlib in the north-west of Syria. The Shiite population of the two cities was exchanged with the population of the Sunni towns of Madaya and Zabadani near Damascus, cities that had also been besieged by the Syrian regime. Since then, it has become a shorthand reference to the Aleppo-Homs-Damascus axis, as well as Syria’s coastal regions, with the implication that, in a pinch, the regime would consider restoration of its control over these areas as an acceptable outcome of the war. In a candid speech on 26 July 2015, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in fact conceded that the Syrian army could not guard every spot of Syrian soil because otherwise more crucial areas would be infiltrated by ‘terrorists’, endangering their stability. But Assad did not use the words ‘Useful Syria’ to refer to these territories. Rather, four minutes later into the same speech, he stressed that all regions of Syria are equal and that the regime does not discriminate, but that military exigencies require a temporary preference to defend the more strategically important areas first.

 Nevertheless, Western analysts soon framed a kind of ‘Useful Syria’-doctrine that would supposedly guide the Syrian regime´s strategy to consolidate its grip over said parts of the country[1] and of Iran to connect Hezbollah’s strongholds in Lebanon with Syria’s coastal region.[2] This, however, ignored the repeatedly and publicly stated intent of the regime to take back ‘every inch of Syria’.[3] Tellingly, the term ‘Useful Syria’ has  not once been employed by the Syrian regime’s itself. The only article in Syrian state media that refers to this concept heavily criticizes the notion and sees it as a US invention aimed at splitting up Syria and to maintain its military base in al-Tanf on the Syrian-Iraqi border.[4] So, where does the term ‘Useful Syria’ come from if not from the Syrian regime?

 Historically, ‘Useful Syria’ meant something different. Around 1920, the French used it in a bid to maintain control over today’s Syria and the petroleum resources of Mosul while renouncing their claim to ‘Greater Syria’, which included Palestine and Jordan. At the time, Palestine and Jordan were considered ‘Useless Syria’. As it happened, the French Prime Minister Clemenceau in the end also had to surrender the Mosul region to his British counterpart, Lloyd George, under intense pressure, but managed to retain 23,75% of the shares of what would later become the Iraq Petroleum Company for the ‘Compagnie française des pétroles’ (now Total).[5]

 More recently, the French journalist Georges Malbrunot used the expression ‘Syrie utile’ in an article in Le Figaro in 2012[6], predicting that the Syrian regime might have to withdraw to the country’s economic and population centres. In making his case, Malbrunot took a page from the French colonial playbook in Algeria: keep control over economically relevant regions as basis for fighting a long war of attrition against internal ‘enemies’.

 The dichotomy of useful/useless (utile/inutile) is well known to the French as they widely practiced it during their colonial rule in Africa. The French aimed to control cities at the coast as well as resource-rich regions in the periphery (‘Afrique utile’) while marginalizing economically irrelevant regions (‘Afrique inutile’).[7] French policy in Morocco is a good example of this practice: the French focused on controlling the urban centres of Rabat and Casablanca but left the Rif region to its own devices, the effects of which can still be felt today.[8]

 When one applies this economic approach to Syria, it is self-evident that the agriculture, oil and phosphate-rich regions of Palmyra and Deir Ezzor in the east of the country will not be considered ‘useless’ by the Syrian regime as their revenues are significant.[9] That the Syrian military fought to regain those regions before advancing south and towards Idlib is telling. In short, the geographical and economical notion of ‘Useful Syria’ only makes sense when including the resource-rich eastern parts of the country. But this makes practically all of Syria ‘useful’, rendering the notion analytically impractical.

 A more helpful way of applying the notion of ‘Useful Syria’ discards its geographical connotations, and views it in loyalist terms instead. Through population- and ceasefire deals the regime re-established social control over reconquered areas and made them ‘useful’. Inhabitants were given the option to remain, or to move to rebel-controlled areas such as Idlib. Those that remained know that they are under government surveillance. The climate of fear that has been created by mass disappearances, torture and executions has further battered them into submission. The resulting ‘loyalty’ will help prevent future uprisings. Further loyalist strategies for creating a ‘Useful Syria’ that the regime applies include considering those that fled military conscription as having lost a right to return,[10] imprisoning returning refugees viewed as disloyal and rewarding loyalists with contracts to rebuild destroyed cities and giving them preferential housing access. Finally, some areas in Syria have been selectively depopulated of Sunnis, which strengthens the regime´s support base in strategic locations.[11] In terms of loyalty these areas are now ‘useful’ to the Syrian regime, as the risk of a future uprising has been decreased.

 In summary, when thinking about the Syrian regime’s war fighting strategy, two things are worth keeping in mind. First, the Syrian regime does not limit itself to a geographical notion of a ‘Useful Syria’ in the sense of the Aleppo-Homs-Damascus axis and the coastal regions. Instead, the resource-rich east is part and parcel of its reconquest. This means that Assad’s repeated announcements to take back every inch of Syria need to be taken at face value. The regime’s military preparations for the campaign on Idlib are in full swing and negotiations with Syria’s Kurds and the Syrian Democratic Council have commenced to agree on a roadmap that would see regime cooperation in the provision of utilities and services. That the US presence in al-Tanf is a thorn in the Syrian’s regime flesh is no secret. In the longer term, Syrian military advances on al-Tanf and the adjacent areas of the Syrian-Iraqi desert where remnants of ISIS pursue their activities can be expected.

 Second, the regime shores up loyalty by instilling a climate of fear in reconquered regions as well as in areas that never rose against it. In reconquered areas, the regime moreover engages in selectively permitting refugee and IDP return based on perceived loyalty. This re-population tactic is key to decrease the risk of future uprisings. International reconstruction policies and aid should be mindful of it. 

 Matthias Sulz is a junior research associate with the Conflict Research Unit of the Clingendael Institute. This long read is part of its Levant research program.

  

 [1] Sayigh, Y. (2015): http://carnegie-mec.org/2015/06/25/redrawing-lines-in-syria-s-shatterbelt-pub-60484; Qutrib, H.I. (2017): https://www.kfcris.com/en/view/post/130  / Beauchamp, Z. (2016): https://www.vox.com/2016/3/15/11240318/putin-syria-withdrawal-retro  / Thompson, J. (2018): http://meirss.org/1262-2/  / Haid, H. (2016): https://lb.boell.org/en/2016/10/28/partitioning-syria-solution

 [2] Ghaddar, H. (2016): https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/irans-useful-syria-is-practically-complete

 [3] Cousseran, J.-C.; Daguzan, J.-F; Levallois, A.; Tannous, M.-N. (2016): p. 10. https://www.frstrategie.org/web/documents/programmes/observatoire-du-monde-arabo-musulman-et-du-sahel/publications/4.pdf  / Sanger, D.E.; Gladstone, R. (2016): https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/08/world/middleeast/defiant-assad-vows-to-retake-every-inch-of-syria-from-his-foes.html

 [4] Alloush, I. (2017): http://tishreen.news.sy/?p=96140#prettyPhoto

 [5] Laurens, H. (2003): https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2003/04/LAURENS/10102

 [6] Malbrunot, G. (2012): http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2012/06/13/01003-20120613ARTFIG00732-syrie-pourquoi-le-regime-durcit-la-repression.php

 [7] Cf. Reno, W. (1999): Warlord Politics and African States. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner

 [8] Cf. https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2017/07/08/moroccos-unrest-is-worsening

 [9] Balanche, F. (2017): https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/assad-needs-useless-syria-too / Charap, S.; Martini, J. (2018): https://www.rand.org/blog/2018/07/time-to-make-a-deal-on-syria.html

 [10] خطاب الرئيس الأسد بتاريخ 26-7-2015: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdBCQqWSKCA Min. 44:05

 [11] https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/irans-useful-syria-is-practically-complete

 Share this:EmailFacebookTwitterGoogleReddit   Permalink | Print | 5 comments Categories: Politics, Society & Culture     60 years after Iraq’s 1958 July 14 Revolution by Christopher Solomon  Posted by Chris Solomon on Friday, August 24th, 2018  60 years after Iraq’s 1958 July 14 Revolution by Christopher Solomon @Solomon_Chris

 

 The black, white, and green tricolor flag emblazoned with the eight-point red star of Ishtar fluttered amongst the marchers. The flags waved by members of the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) had previously flown over a period of Iraq that had long been forgotten by the rest of the world. A distant, but positive memory for some Iraqis, the regime of military strongman Abd al-Karim Qasim evokes a period of progressive politics, anti-sectarianism, and an emphasis on Iraqi self-determination. Though the bygone era had been engulfed by the long rule of Saddam and the Iraqi Baathists, the Iraqi Communist Party continues to channel Qasim in modern day Iraq. In Firdus Square, the party stages annual rallies where supporters carry the Qasim regime’s flag along with large portraits of the ruler in order to commemorate the anniversary of the July 14 Revolution. Who was Qasim and how did his coup change Iraq? What lessons can be drawn from the July 14 Revolution today?

 

 Returning to the present moment, the May 12, 2018 parliamentary elections have pulled the ICP back into the consciousness of the West. As the United States and Iran watched the electoral success of Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr and his Sa’eroun alliance, the subsequent formation of a new Iraqi government could see the muting of both nations’ influence. Just as Qasim successfully implemented his military coup in 1958, Sadr in 2018 in a sense has delivered a coup if of his own, only this time at the ballot box. Like Qasim, Sadr promoted an “Iraq first” policy that seeks to put the country above the regional fray and preserve its independence.[1] In the realm of foreign policy, this independence was first seen in March 1959 when Qasim began a friendly relationship with the Soviet Union and allowed for the transfer of Soviet military hardware and advisers, a first for a modern Iraqi leader. Even though his rule lasted just over four years and six months, the lessons and legacy of Qasim’s regime still resonate today, with recent trends of Iraqi nationalism, anti-establishment fervor and anti-corruption undercurrents evidently dominating the political landscape.

 The July 14 Revolution Coup 

 Sixty years ago, Qasim led the July 14 Revolution, abruptly ending Iraq’s monarchy, removing Iraq from the Baghdad Pact and reorienting Iraq’s foreign policy away from the West. For outside observers, the coup tragically “placed a General on the throne” and by brutally eliminating the monarchy from Iraq’s political sphere permanently transformed the very character of state power in the country.[2]

 In order to carry-out his coup, Qasim took advantage of the Iraqi army’s deployment near its Western border. Fearing the movement of Syrian troops along their shared border, King Faisal II and Prime Minister Nuri al-Said ordered the army to mobilize for deployment to the frontier. Taking advantage of the security vacuum created by this mobilization, then-General Qasim, together with Colonel Abdul Salam Arif, moved the army’s 3rd Division stationed in eastern Iraq towards the western border in support of Jordan. Passing early in the morning through Baghdad, Qasim suddenly ordered the secret group of Free Officers (formed and inspired by Gamal Abdul Nasser) to seize the radio station, the royal palace, and other key sites in the capital. The Hashemites in neighboring Jordan blasted the coup as the work of foreign powers while BBC radio stations reported that the United Arab Republic was “naturally delighted by news of the Iraq coup.”[3] Successfully taking control of key points in the city of Baghdad, Qasim’s coup in the summer of 1958 ended the thirty seven year reign of the British-backed Hashemites in Baghdad. Unlike the 1941 Golden Square coup of pro-Nazi Rashid Ali al-Gaylani however, the British did not respond to Qasim’s coup by conducting a monarchy restoration invasion.

 Sixty years later, and the  July 14th anniversary of the coup comes at a time when the context of the region has triggered a Qasim-esque resurgence of Iraqi nationalism alongside an intense popular demand for political and economic reform. Despite the temporal difference, the geopolitical situations of these two eras are remarkably similar. The defeat of Da’esh, the re-conquest of the territories held by the Kurds, (including the oil-resources around Kirkuk), each highlight how Iraq is in the process of a tremendous shakeup that recalls the dramatic experience of the Qasim era. Leading up to most recent parliamentary elections, The West widely expected the incumbent Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to creep across the finish line. Given the lack of alternative options within the Iraqi political landscape, the U.S. had been heavily invested in Abadi’s electoral survival.[4] As the West witnessed Sadr’s Iraqi populism-powered victory, much speculation has been generated about Iraq’s future.

 Anti-corruption and the Communists 

 Qasim’s enduring popularity among secular-minded and leftist Iraqis continues to prevail through the decades after the military figure launched a coup and established a benevolent dictatorship. In the Iraqi popular imagination, Qasim continues to be viewed as a patriot who kept Iraq out of the Nasserist and American orbits, as well as a strong leader who stood for the poor and promoted progressive values. Qasim was known for living a simple lifestyle and even slept in the Ministry of Defense building. His land reform efforts, educational, and social policies continue to be examples hailed today by the ICP as a process cut short by the sudden end of Qasim’s regime in 1963. He also placed a noted importance on including women in Iraq’s civil society and promoting gender empowerment through education and political participation. On top of all this, being part Kurdish, his regime promoted an anti-sectarian agenda for the country, a policy that resonates with many Iraqis today.

 Economically, Qasim was famous for nationalizing the oil sector, significantly scaling back the power of the Anglo-American Iraqi Petroleum Company and creating the Iraq National Oil Company. His government also laid the groundwork for the establishment of OPEC in Baghdad in September 1960.

 Despite this rosy retrospection, the Qasim regime’s relationship with the ICP was not always easy. The communist party was not fully in support of the military nature of Qasim’s coup, the inclusion of Arab nationalists in his cabinet, and his lack of desire to contest elections. The ICP had earlier been behind massive demonstrations in 1948 as well as the Intifada of 1952 directed at the corruption of the monarchy. The People’s Resistance, the name of the ICP militia organized after the July Revolution to defend Qasim’s regime, sought a central role in the security of the new revolutionary government and the country. However, in spite of sharing many goals, Qasim sought to curb the ICP’s influence and even issued an order for it to disband. In spite of the ban, the party’s swelling ranks by 1959 gave the organization immense influence in Baghdad, forcing Qasim to reconsider the party as “a power to be reckoned with.”[5]

 Returning to the present, and the alliance formed by Sadr and the modern ICP signals the priority of economic development over the widely discussed problems of sectarianism in post-Da’esh Iraq. The nation continues to face the same issues of poverty and the uneven provision of essential services. Supporters of the Sadr-Communist alliance hope the political shake up can bring economic development to their bastions of support, such as the power-outage-plagued Sadr City, (originally established as a Revolution City by Qasim’s regime in 1959). Jassem al-Helfi, a member of the ICP in Sadr City, expressed his concerns for maintaining the support amid the slow pace of restructuring, “How can we convince our supporters that reform will not happen instantaneously?”[6]

 

 Days before the election, Sadr met with ICP Politboro member Raid Jahid Fahmi in Najaf where the two agreed on the need to combat corruption and hold politicians accountable after Da’esh’s military defeat.[7] Electrical shortages, leading to problems such as last summer’s insufferable heat waver, will keep the issue of government services and infrastructure front and center. ICP member and recently elected female MP from Najaf, Suhad al-Khateeb, was another example of the Communists’ newfound viability. She touched on the region’s geopolitics saying, “There is a conflict between Iran and the U.S. in the region, in Iraq, Yemen and Bahrain. But we, the Iraqis, want our independence back from the U.S. and Iran. These two counties would harm the Iraqis with their conflict.”[8]

  

 A History of Coups and Regional Power Plays Qasim gathered with a delegation of Syrian journalists. Photo courtesy of Syrian History Prior to the 1958 Revolution, the region had already been rocked by several coups. Syria experienced three rapid-fire coups in 1949 alone. The power of Hashemite Iraq had a severe impact on the intrigue and stability of neighboring Syria. Most interestingly, the second coup in Damascus was led by Colonel Sami Hinnawi, who launched a coup in August 1949, and was accused of seeking a union with Iraq’s Hashemite regime. The so-called Fertile Crescent Plan, although favored by the pro-business People’s Party in Aleppo, was by and large unpopular with mainstream Syrian society due to the British monarchy’s continued backing of Baghdad. Predictably, this resulted in Hinnawi’s overthrow in the final coup in December and the subsequent rise of Adib Shishakli and his four years of military rule.

 Nearby in Egypt, the July 23 1952 revolution brought Gamal Abdul Nasser and the Free Officers to power, effectively ending yet another Middle Eastern monarchy. Just a few years later, the fall of Shishakli in Damascus and the establishment of the United Arab Republic (UAR) in February 1958 between Syria and Egypt changed the dynamics of the region entirely. To Iraq’s west, Jordan faced its own troubles including Arab nationalist military officer Ali Abu Nuwar and the April riots at the royal army barracks in Zarqa. Once Syria was out of the picture, Nuri Pasha al-Said sought to ward off the Pan-Arabist tide by pre-emptively creating an Arab Federation with Jordan, a move which was struck down after only six months by Qasim’s coup. In Lebanon, the government of Camille Chamoun refused to join the UAR, and when the July 14th coup occurred in Iraq, he turned to the Eisenhower Administration for support against pro-Nasser rebels at home, sparking the 1958 Lebanon Crisis leading to an American intervention against Arab nationalist rebels.

 The View From the West The West viewed Qasim’s takeover in Baghdad with great panic. The Suez Crisis was still fresh in the minds of Washington and London, while the Baghdad Pact, a centerpiece of the Cold War’s Middle East anti-Soviet military strategy, was rendered meaningless without Iraq. For the U.S. and the British, the coup was a deep embarrassment and became a source of handwringing. The British, although dismayed, were determined to cut their losses and build a new relationship with Qasim. As long as their economic interests with the Iraqi Petroleum Company were maintained, they were willing to acquiescence to his regime. On the other hand, the Eisenhower Administration viewed the situation as a political fiasco. The long serving head of the Foreign Relations Committee, Democratic Senator James William Fulbright of Arkansas accused CIA chief Allen Dulles of “fumbling in the dark” with the large budget allocated to the agency’s intelligence activities.[9]

 The View from Within Within Iraq, Qasim faced his own serious challenges. The veteran nationalist Rashid Ali returned after a long exile in Germany and Saudi Arabia, planning a coup attempt for December 1958, one that ultimately failed and landed him in prison. The impetus for the coup being that Ali differed over Qasim’s wish to avoid an overtly Pan-Arab character in his government, along with the fact that the Qasim regime did not offer the infamous politician a ministry post.[10] Rashid Ali was later pardoned and released into exile, where he lived in Beirut until his death in 1965. However, the Iraqi Nasserites longed to join the UAR and remained unhappy that Qasim’s regime was close with the Communists. These disagreements led to conflict when in March 1959, Arab nationalist army officers revolted in Mosul and clashed with pro-Communist militias.  Mosul then became a battleground, culminating in a standoff between the Iraqi army and the rebels that ultimately helped the Qasim regime persevere. Their rebellion had been crushed. Afterwards, the communists helped implement an anti-Arabist purge of the army, a move which further galvanized the Baathists.

 To aid in survival, Qasim built an alliance with the Kurds. The above picture shows a young Masud Barzani, the future leader of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region (IKR), sitting next to Qasim. His father, Mustafa, who had earlier taken part in the short-lived Mahabad Republic of 1946, returned from exile to Iraq and formed a friendship, however rocky, with Qasim.[11] Kurdish revolts broke out in 1961 and Qasim strove to achieve stability using both negotiations and military force. For both Qasim and Sadr, the Kurdish region continues to come into play, most recently evidence by Barzani, whose 2017 resignation occurred after spearheading the Kurdish independence referendum. This move dramatically backfired and saw Abadi order the military to retake Kurdish areas, including the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, an offensive that was widely lauded by Arab Iraqis and which prominently featured the Iranian-backed Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) militias. Kurdish nationals then suffered through a blockade lasting six months. Tension continues to exist, with Baghdad issuing arrest warrants for Kurdish leaders, such as Kirkuk Provincial Council Deputy Chairman Rebwar Fayq Talabani, a decision that was later cancelled.[12]

  

 This article was original posted on August 9, 2018 on Gulf International Forum. You can finish reading the article on the Gulf International Forum’s website.

  

  

 References:

 [1] Margaret Coker, Once Hated by U.S. and Tied to Iran, Is Sadr Now ‘Face of Reform’ in Iraq?, The New York Times, May 20, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/20/world/middleeast/iraq-election-sadr.html

 [2] Dennis P. Chapman, July 14th, 1958: Iraq’s Day of Infamy, Small Wars Journal: http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/july-14th-1958-iraq%E2%80%99s-day-of-infamy

 [3] 1958: Coup in Iraq sparks jitters in Middle East, BBC News, July 14, 1958, http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/14/newsid_3736000/3736391.stm

 [4] Aron Lund, How Washington Learned to Love Haider al-Abadi, The Century Foundation, March 29, 2018, https://tcf.org/content/report/washington-learned-love-haider-al-abadi/

 [5] Marion Farouk-Sluglett and Peter Sluglett, Iraq Since 1958: From Revolution to Dictatorship, p. 62-63

 [6] Isabel Coles and  Ghassan Adnan, Iraq Kingmaker’s Daunting Task: Lift the Poor of Sadr City, The Wall Street Journal, June 3, 2018, https://www.wsj.com/articles/iraq-kingmakers-daunting-task-lift-the-poor-of-sadr-city-1528023600

 [7] Sadr and Communist leaders: Battle Against Da’esh will not achieve its objective if corruption not combated, April 27, 2017, Al-Sumaria,  https://www.alsumaria.tv/news/202114/%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B5%D8%AF%D8%B1-%D9%88%D9%82%D8%A7%D8%AF%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B4%D9%8A%D9%88%D8%B9%D9%8A-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%B9%D8%B1%D9%83%D8%A9-%D8%B6%D8%AF-%D8%AF%D8%A7%D8%B9%D8%B4-%D9%84%D9%86-%D8%AA%D8%AD%D9%82%D9%82-%D8%A3%D9%87%D8%AF%D8%A7%D9%81%D9%87/ar

 [8] Alex MacDonald and Mustafa Abu Sneineh, First female Communist MP in Iraq’s holiest city calls for ‘social justice’, Middle East Eye, May 22, 2018, http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/female-communist-mp-heart-iraqs-holiest-city-1374412216

 [9] Roby Barrett, Intervention in Iraq, 1958-1959, The Middle East Institute Policy Brief, No. 11, April 2008. p. 6

 [10] Marion Farouk-Sluglett and Peter Sluglett Iraq Since 1958: From Revolution to Dictatorship, p. 61

 [11] For more background see: Christopher Solomon, That Time There Was a Kurdish State, Raddington Report, November 1, 2017, https://raddingtonreport.com/that-time-there-was-a-kurdish-state/

 [12] Iraq issues arrest warrant for Kurdish referendum leader, Agence France-Presse, June 4, 2018

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