By Michael Karadjis

In early June, journalist Seamus Milne penned a piece for the Guardian entitled ‘Now the truth emerges how the US fuelled the rise of Isis in Syria and Iraq’ (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/03/us-isis-syria-iraq).

Of course, we all wait for “the truth.” The nickname “truth” has been used by every kind of religious organisation for centuries – indeed they all had opposing “truths.” Generations of Americans saw the reflection of their own imperialist leaders in Superman fighting for “truth, justice and the American way.” For decades Soviet citizens were told their leaders spoke only “the truth” in a newspaper by that name.

Milne, in other words, is in good company.

For an article that promises to show that the US “fuelled the rise of ISIS,” it begins, oddly enough, with a failed “terrorism” case in the UK that had zero to do with ISIS. Perhaps Milne was just making a separate point with this example, despite the title. But there is so much wrong with the “example” and Milne’s implications about it that the case is worth looking at in its own terms.

Milne writes that “on Monday the trial in London of a Swedish man, Bherlin Gildo, accused of terrorism in Syria, collapsed after it became clear British intelligence had been arming the same rebel groups the defendant was charged with supporting.” Further, the defence “argued that going ahead with the trial would have been an “affront to justice” when there was plenty of evidence the British state was itself providing “extensive support” to the armed Syrian opposition.”

Milne also claimed that alleged British aid to “the armed Syrian opposition” was not only non-lethal aid but also training, logistics and secret supply of “arms on a massive scale”.

Gildo’s defence lawyers used a number of articles from the media to help their case. According to the article about the trial that Milne links to, by Richard Norton-Taylor, these included “one from the Guardian on 8 March 2013, on the west’s training of Syrian rebels in Jordan,” New York Times articles on 24 March and 21 June 2013 (in fact, 2012), “and an article in the London Review of Books from 14 April 2014, (which) implicated MI6 in a “rat line” for the transfer of arms from Libya” (http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jun/01/trial-swedish-man-accused-terrorism-offences-collapse-bherlin-gildo?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=*Mideast%20Brief&utm_campaign=New%20Campaign).

Now, I agree with Milne that it would be absurd to send someone to prison “for doing what ministers and their security officials were up to themselves,” and indeed I am pleased that it is thus more difficult to prosecute people going to fight Assad’s tyranny on trumped up “terrorism” charges.

But Milne’s points here seem to be more about using the case (1) to claim that Britain and the US really were “massively arming” the Syrian rebellion, (2) to suggest that, if true, this would not be a good thing to do, and (3) to try to connect the alleged “terrorists” that he alleges Britain and the US were supporting to those that Gildo was fighting with, and both to the actual ISIS terrorists. In other words, making the case that any support to the great Syrian uprising against a fascist regime leads directly to support for ISIS; it’s the same thing. As Milne asserts: “American forces bomb one set of rebels while backing another in Syria.” Thus to Milne, both ISIS, and the Syrian rebels – who have done more to fight ISIS than anyone else in the region – are both “rebels.”

It therefore becomes a political issue. It is worth clarifying a number of points here: what exactly the court said; what these articles alleged about who the British government (or the US government, which Milne’s title refers to) was aiding at this time (2012), and the reality of this aid; who Gildo was alleged to be fighting for; and what any of these organisations have to do with “the rise of ISIS in Syria and Iraq.”

“The truth,” it turns out, is something based on “amalgam” theory taken to an absurd level. An example of amalgam theory would be to say, for example, that since the Cuban and Venezuelan revolutionary leftist governments, ISIS, al-Qaida, the Iranian regime, Hamas, the French National Front and a wing of the US paleao-right (Buchanan etc) are also vocally opposed to US intervention around the world, that they therefore must all be allied or have something in common.

What the court say in the Gildo case?

First of all, the role of a court of law was not to do in-depth research into who exactly was aiding who and how much and what relationship they had to each other and so on. While I have not read the court transcripts, Milne’s assertion that “it became clear” in the court that British intelligence “had been arming the same rebel groups” as Gildo was fighting for would seem highly unlikely because it flatly contradicts what is in all the media articles referred to. Rather, the Norton-Taylor article says that “Gildo’s defence lawyers” asserted this.

Milne simply made up the “it became clear” stuff.

And actually, when the defence lawyers are quoted in that article, it seems that even Norton-Taylor was simply being “journalistic” in using the term “the same rebel groups.” In reality, the article quotes defence counsel Henry Blaxland QC:

“If it is the case that HM government was actively involved in supporting armed resistance to the Assad regime at a time when the defendant was present in Syria and himself participating in such resistance it would be unconscionable to allow the prosecution to continue … “if government agencies, of which the prosecution is a part, are themselves involved in the use of force, in whatever way, it is our submission that would be an affront to justice to allow the prosecution to continue.”

So, nothing to do with “the same rebel groups” at all; on the contrary, merely the fact that both whoever M16 was allegedly supporting, and the group Gildo was in, were both part of the (broad, multi-faceted) “armed resistance” to Syria’s fascistic regime, if it involved some “use of force, in whatever way.”

Moreover, it is also not true that the defence lawyers, let alone the court, decided it was ‘clear” that British intelligence had been involved in these activities (after all, imagine if our courts decided what was “the truth” based on articles in the mass media); rather, what Gildo’s solicitor, Gareth Peirce, said was that:

“Given that there is a reasonable basis for believing that the British were themselves involved in the supply of arms, if that’s so, it would be an utter hypocrisy to prosecute someone who has been involved in the armed resistance.”

The CIA role in Turkey: preventing the Syrian rebels getting the arms they needed

The second question is who these articles alleged about who the British or US governments and intelligence agencies were aiding at this time, and the nature and quantity of this alleged aid.

Firstly, looking at the two New York Times articles mentioned, there is no mention of British intelligence. The allegations there are entirely about the CIA. A number of things are clear from these articles. First, that the role of the CIA officers, based in Turkey, was not to supply arms (“the Obama administration has said it is not providing arms to the rebels”), but rather to “help” those supplying arms “decide which Syrian opposition fighters across the border will receive arms.” Those allegedly supplying the arms were “a shadowy network of intermediaries including Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood and paid for by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar” (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/world/middleeast/cia-said-to-aid-in-steering-arms-to-syrian-rebels.html).

What was the nature of the decision-making “help”? According to the same New York Times article (June 21, 2012), “the C.I.A. officers have been in southern Turkey for several weeks, in part to help keep weapons out of the hands of fighters allied with Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups.”

Further details are in the March 24, 2013 New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/25/world/middleeast/arms-airlift-to-syrian-rebels-expands-with-cia-aid.html). This article gives details on very significant arms shipments from Qatar throughout 2012 and into 2013, and then later arms shipments from Saudi Arabia beginning at the end of 2012. The supply of arms to Syrian rebels by these two countries is a well-established fact.

Milne may have a problem with that; but Syrian victims of Assad’s genocidal slaughter, and for opponents of tyranny everywhere (myself included), their arming of the Syrian rebels, for their own reasons, might be seen as one of the few good things they do (and from this article, we see that the rebels on the ground, facing such a massive military machine as Assad’s, had a very different assessment of how significant these shipments were to western media claims). But this are not the issue here. The issue is the actual role of the CIA and who they were supporting.

According to the article, “Qatar has been an active arms supplier — so much so that the United States became concerned about some of the Islamist groups that Qatar has armed … The American government became involved, the former American official said, in part because there was a sense that other states would arm the rebels anyhow. The C.I.A. role in facilitating the shipments, he said, gave the United States a degree of influence over the process, including trying to steer weapons away from Islamist groups and persuading donors to withhold portable antiaircraft missiles … But the rebels were clamoring for even more weapons, continuing to assert that they lacked the firepower to fight a military armed with tanks, artillery, multiple rocket launchers and aircraft … Many were also complaining, saying they were hearing from arms donors that the Obama administration was limiting their supplies and blocking the distribution of the antiaircraft and anti-armor weapons they most sought.”

Regarding the Saudi shipments, which the US was allegedly more OK with, they were via Jordan and explicitly for rebels in the south. Even today, secular FSA forces have absolute dominance in the rebellion in the south; back at that time Islamist and definitely jihadist forces were next to completely absent there.

To summarise: the two NYT articles say nothing about British intelligence; do not tell us exactly which groups were being armed, but that the role of the CIA was to prevent weapons getting to “Islamist groups” or “fighters allied with al-Qaida;” they don’t say the US supplied arms but that it “limited supplies;” and specifically, that the CIA ensured the rebels could not get the only weapons of any use against Assad’s massive air war, manpads (portable anti-aircraft weapons).

Indeed, this last point turned out to be by far the most crucial result of this entire episode of US intervention: according to a report by Nour Malas in the Wall Street Journal (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443684104578062842929673074.html) “the Pentagon and CIA ramped up their presence on Turkey’s southern border” precisely after more weapons began to flow in to the rebels in mid-2012, especially small numbers of portable anti-aircraft weapons (Manpads), some from Libya, “smuggled into the country through the Turkish border”, others “supplied by militant Palestinian factions now supporting the Syrian uprising and smuggled in through the Lebanese border”, or some even bought from regime forces. “In July, the U.S. effectively halted the delivery of at least 18 Manpads sourced from Libya, even as the rebels pleaded for more effective antiaircraft missiles to counter regime airstrikes in Aleppo, people familiar with that delivery said.”

I’ve dissected these reports in more detail here: https://mkaradjis.wordpress.com/2014/09/28/yet-again-on-those-hoary-old-allegations-that-the-us-has-armed-the-fsa-since-2012/.

What was the British role in Jordan?

What of the Guardian on 8 March 2013 (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/08/west-training-syrian-rebels-jordan)? Finally, this one does talk about a British role. The article begins:

“Western (including British – MK) training of Syrian rebels is under way in Jordan in an effort to strengthen secular elements in the opposition as a bulwark against Islamic extremism, and to begin building security forces to maintain order in the event of Bashar al-Assad’s fall.” The alleged training was “focused on senior Syrian army officers who defected.”

The article says the UK Ministry of Defence denied providing military training to the rebels, but claimed instead they have been training the Jordanian military, but the Guardian had “been told” that British intelligence were providing the rebels “logistical and other advice in some form.”

There had been “no “green light” for the rebel forces being trained to be sent into Syria.” That is because their purpose was not to fight the regime. Rather, “they would be deployed if there were signs of a complete collapse of public services in the southern Syrian city of Daraa, which could trigger a million more Syrians seeking refuge in Jordan, which is reeling under the strain of accommodating the 320,000 who have already sought shelter there. The aim of sending western-trained rebels over the border would be to create a safe area for refugees on the Syrian side of the border, to prevent chaos and to provide a counterweight to al-Qaida-linked extremists who have become a powerful force in the north.”

Regarding Jordan’s interest in all this, the article noted that “for the first two years of the Syrian civil war, Jordan has sought to stay out of the fray, fearing a backlash from Damascus and an influx of extremists that would destabilise the precariously balanced kingdom.” However, there has been a tactical shift precisely because “Islamist forces have been gaining steam in the north and Jordan is keen to avoid that in the south. Having been very hands-off, they now see that they have to do something in the south.”

To sum up again: there was a British role in Jordan; it was explicitly to support “secular” groups and “defected Syrian army officers” in the south to balance them against the “Islamist” or “al-Qaida” forces gaining strength in the north; there was nothing whatsoever about supplying arms; and the purpose of training a small core of western-leaning military officers in Jordan was to help fill a catastrophic vacuum in case the Assad regime collapsed. There is a very clear fear of such a collapse in the article.

The other article mentioned (The Red Line and the Rat Line http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n08/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line) is Seymour Hersh’s widely discredited attempt to claim the Assad regime did not launch a chemical attack on rebel-held Damascus suburbs in August 2013 and that instead the rebels, supplied by Turkey, gassed their own children to death. Hersh’s entire story relies on the alleged testimony of an unnamed source in the US intelligence community. What it says on this “rat-line” issue likely has about the same amount of credibility. The significant addition to the above New York Times stories is Hersh’s assertion that “the CIA, with the support of MI6, was responsible for getting arms from Gaddafi’s arsenals into Syria.” Hersh is the only source that makes such a claim; but he is unable to verify it for us because the whole alleged agreement is in a secret annex to a Senate Intelligence Committee report that only a few people have ever seen. It is therefore difficult to know what to make of any of this.

For good measure, Hersh adds “many of those in Syria who ultimately received the weapons were jihadists, some of them affiliated with al-Qaida.” Of course he provides not a shred of evidence for this and it appears more a statement of ideology than fact. Ironically, he later notes that the US quit this rat-line because it got concerned that Turkey and Qatar were letting Islamists get some of the arms and even that, heaven forbid, some manpads may have got through to the rebels, at least in this instance agreeing with all other sources regarding the US view of Islamists.

From all these articles – and from a wealth of others I have read – I can say with confidence that Milne’s assertion that Britain had been involved in the secret supply of “arms on a massive scale” to Syrian rebels is entirely made up; actually no evidence of any arms being supplied by the US, let alone Britain, appears anywhere. But to the extent any kind of “training” or logistical help occurred, or to the extent that the US allowed other countries to supply a certain amount of light arms, in every case it was to some described as secular or defected Syrian military with the specific objective of blocking any Islamist forces, and especially al-Qaida.

The absolute discontinuity between the US, the FSA and Nusra

Now getting to the next main question: who is Gildo charged with joining in Syria? While it is difficult to get clear information, it seems “the group he had joined, Kataib al-Muhajireen, had gone on to work with Jabhat al-Nusra,” that is, the Syrian al-Qaida group
(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3105884/Terror-suspect-Bherlin-Gildo-freed-intelligence-services-refuse-hand-evidence.html). At that time, late 2012, Nusra was only just emerging from the shadows, till then mainly known for a string of car bombings. From the outset, its relationship with the mainstream rebels of the Free Syrian Army was difficult; a range of more moderate to hard-line Islamist militia stood between them, but on the whole were more closely allied with the FSA than with Nusra.

Clearly, the group Gildo joined was exactly the group that the US and UK were most concerned with attempting to thwart, with blocking arms from getting to, according to all the relevant articles. And in fact it went beyond this.

In late 2012, US officials met with FSA leaders, the latter trying to see if it was possible to get any US arms for their fight against the fascist regime. However, the Americans only seemed interested in getting information about Nusra, and then surprised the FSA with the demand that it turn its guns on Nusra if it wanted any US arms. When the FSA rebels said their current priority was fighting the regime, the US agents told them they had to fight Nusra now, and worry about the regime later (http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/middle-east/americas-hidden-agenda-in-syrias-war).

In the awkward world of anti-Syrian revolution conspiracy theory, the FSA and other Syrian rebels are “US-backed jihadists.” To deal with the “US-backed” part first, while they are entitled to try to get arms from whoever they can, it is notable that the FSA rejected this US condition for getting arms, understanding it to be what it was: not an expression of US preference for secular rebels, nor any honest move to arm them, but rather an attempt to get the democratic-secular and jihadist wings of the uprising to slaughter each other while the Assad regime laughs. And given that Nusra had already demonstrated some prowess in fighting the regime, and the US had provided nothing, when in December 2012 the US declared Nusra a terrorist organisation, demonstrations broke out in Syrian cities declaring “we are all Nusra” (http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2012/Dec-14/198527-syrian-protesters-slam-us-blacklisting-of-jihadist-group.ashx#axzz2F62w5Yns). And two years later, when the US began bombing ISIS, but also immediately bombed Nusra but left the regime alone to continue its mass murder, the FSA defended Nusra against US bombing and most major rebel groups condemned the US intervention as an attack on the revolution (https://mkaradjis.wordpress.com/2014/09/25/syrian-rebels-overwhelmingly-condemn-us-bombing-as-an-attack-on-revolution/). So much for the FSA being “US proxies” and so on.

However, did this slogan “we are all Nusra” prove the Syrian rebellion was all “jihadist”? In reality, this slogan was merely a declaration of rejection of US imperialism’s attempts to set conditions on the uprising. The reality was very different from the slogan; the first half of 2013 was continually punctured by FSA armed clashes with Nusra throughout Syria. But these were not attempts by the FSA to do the US bidding to launch an all-out offensive against Nusra; on the contrary, they were either defensive actions against Nusra attacks or actions to defend local people in revolutionary areas against Nusra attempts to impose theocratic repression.

For example, on June 19, 2013 in Jabal al-Wastani in Idlib, Nusra fighters assassinated two civilians in the village of al-Hamama, accusing of owning a bar, and tried to arrest someone, who they accused of working for the regime, in another village. Fighters from the National Unity Brigade of the FSA prevented their entry, telling them it was the court’s jurisdiction to investigate. The FSA then gathered 7 battalions and forced Nusra out of the area. Following this, ten brigades formed an alliance against the jihadists and when Nusra returned to try to force a checkpoint in another village on July 2, they were arrested (http://www.arab-reform.net/empowering-democratic-resistance-syria).

And so what we are left with from this attempt to impose amalgam theory to the US or British governments, the FSA and mainstream Syrian rebels, and al-Nusra, is exactly nothing.

What does any of this have to do with “the rise of ISIS”?

Yet even more intriguing is what any of this could possibly have to do with “the rise of ISIS.” Because whether we are talking about the FSA, Islamist rebels, or al-Nusra, all of them have played a prominent role in fighting ISIS – actually the most prominent role of any armed forces in either Syria or Iraq, and certainly far more prominent than the Assad regime.

Indeed, one reason why we could even talk about the FSA and Nusra fighting in the same trench, following the clashes in the first half of 2013, is precisely because the rise of ISIS forced all Syrian rebels together in order to fight to the death against the now double (and essentially allied) fascist threat of the Assad regime and ISIS.

ISIS was after all not part of any Syrian rebellion, but rather an invasion from across the Iraqi border – simply the new name of “al-Qaida in Iraq.” When it openly split with its Nusra child in mid-2013, it was a fairly straightforward result of the Syrianisation of the ranks of Nusra, as many rebels with no commitment to jihadist ideology joined an organisation with more arms and money, which it could get due to the open Iraqi border. This in turn somewhat moderated Nusra’s practice. By exactly the same token, as the split meant ISIS was now even more dominated by Iraqis and global-jihadists with no relationship to the Syrian masses, and owing their very existence in Syria to the organisation, ISIS’ practice moved from extremely repressive to openly barbaric.

Thus the FSA clashes with Nusra largely ended by mid-2013 but instead a more or less open war began with ISIS from at least July, especially following ISIS’ assassination of an FSA officer, the first of countless. In January 2014, all the mainstream Islamist groups, and Nusra, joined the FSA’s open offensive which drove ISIS out of the whole of western Syria and even significant parts of the east (even briefly Raqqa itself). Once again, this war was launched by the Syrian revolutionary forces based in their own decision-making regarding the threat posed by ISIS to the revolution; it had nothing whatever to do with following US encouragement or orders; they still saw their main enemy as the regime.

In contrast, as is well-known, the Assad regime never managed to drive ISIS out of anywhere at all, and the regime and ISIS both largely avoided hitting each other and instead concentrated all their fire on the Syrian rebels (http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/isis-terror/syria-isis-have-been-ignoring-each-other-battlefield-data-suggests-n264551), sometimes even jointly (eg, Deir Ezzor July 2014, today in Aleppo). The only time the Syrian regime began bombing ISIS (or at least civilians in ISIS-ruled areas) was after the US began bombing ISIS in Syria since September 2014, as the regime shows its worth to the bogus US “war on terror.” And since then, the regime and the US intervention have essentially been allies, including joint bombing of cities (especially Raqqa, eg http://leftfootforward.org/2014/12/raqqa-to-appease-iran-obama-gives-assads-air-force-a-free-pass-for-slaughter/ and http://aranews.net/2015/05/u-s-and-syrian-warplanes-launch-simultaneous-strikes-against-isis-in-raqqa/), the explicit intervention of US bombing to save the Assad regime’s control of Deir Ezzor airport from ISIS later in 2014, and US bombing of Nusra and other non-ISIS opponents of the Assad regime.

Given all this, what does either the alleged (extremely limited) western aid to the secular rebels, or Gildo’s membership of Nusra, have to do with the rise of ISIS, the enemy of both? And the answer again is absolutely nothing.

The famous DIA document

Of course this was rather a long way of answering one “example,” but that’s because such illogical “examples” are continually used to slander the magnificent Syrian people’s uprising as either an American plot or a jihadist war or, more commonly and absurdly, both. So I just wanted to get a few things established before dealing with the second part. Milne claims:

“A revealing light on how we got here has now been shone by a recently declassified secret US intelligence report, written in August 2012, which uncannily predicts – and effectively welcomes – the prospect of a “Salafist principality” in eastern Syria and an al-Qaida-controlled Islamic state in Syria and Iraq. In stark contrast to western claims at the time, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) document identifies al-Qaida in Iraq (which became Isis) and fellow Salafists as the “major forces driving the insurgency in Syria” – and states that “western countries, the Gulf states and Turkey” were supporting the opposition’s efforts to take control of eastern Syria.”

Milne then comments that this is “pretty well exactly what happened two years later” … a year into the Syrian rebellion, the US and its allies weren’t only supporting and arming an opposition they knew to be dominated by extreme sectarian groups; they were prepared to countenance the creation of some sort of “Islamic state” – despite the “grave danger” to Iraq’s unity – as a Sunni buffer to weaken Syria.”

One of the best refutations I have seen of this interpretation of the DIA document was by the excellent ‘magpie’ site at https://magpie68.wordpress.com/2015/06/05/who-are-the-real-godfathers-of-isis/. Below I will give a few thoughts of my own, largely in agreement with this view.

First I might just correct part of Milne’s presentation of the document. It does not exactly claim that al-Qaida in Iraq and “fellow Salafists” were the “major forces driving the insurgency in Syria.” It claims “the Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood and AQI” are the major driving forces. But either way, what this tells us is that this is hardly the declaration of an “intelligence” organisation such as the DIA, which would know better than this. Dated August 2012, the rebellion was then overwhelmingly dominated by the FSA; several Islamist militia had been set up but were far from being the “driving force” at that stage; the Muslim Brotherhood was and is overwhelmingly an exile-based organisation, but even Qatar’s attempt to insert the MB into the rebellion only really began around mid-2012; and AQI was entirely marginal. Regardless of how one assesses the evolution of these factors later, there is simply no evidence in the factual record for such an assessment at that time.

So, if they could get it so wrong, what does this tell us?

It is first important to look at the actual document (http://www.judicialwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Pg.-291-Pgs.-287-293-JW-v-DOD-and-State-14-812-DOD-Release-2015-04-10-final-version11.pdf), and not word documents that have transcribed it. The first thing one will notice is that the first couple of pages, and sporadically elsewhere, are heavily “redacted,” that is, the DIA is protecting confidential sources. In other words this is not an expression of the DIA’s opinion, but “information” being given to the DIA by some source. Indeed, the second thing to notice is that it proclaims itself to be “information report: not finally evaluated intelligence;” one would think that was clear enough. A third noticeable aspect is the clear concern with the security of Iraq, with the Iraq-Syria border, and with the danger posed by the AQI.

This strongly suggests an informant from the Iraqi regime. And the interesting thing about the Iraqi regime is that it bridges being a US satellite derived from the US invasion and being an Iranian satellite allied to the Assad regime and which tends to talk with the same story, such as vague assertions about unnamed “western countries” supporting the “opposition.”

Incidentally, the idea that this vague claim about “western countries” supporting the “opposition” means US support for AQI is quite a stretch – it would indeed be interesting to see the US Defence Department declaring its support for al-Qaida; it is simply not what is being said.

Now even when we deal with what the (probably) Iraqi informant is telling the DIA, it doesn’t exactly say what Milne and the entire Assadophilic cybersphere wants it to say. Where the informant claims that opposition forces are trying to control eastern Syria (Hasake and Deir Ezzor) and that “western countries, the Gulf states and Turkey are supporting these efforts,” it is somewhat unclear if the informant is talking of the present or the future, since the grammar (like elsewhere in the “intelligence” document), is so bad: because this is listed under the sub-heading of “the future assumptions of the crisis,” where the first such “assumption” is the survival of the Assad regime, and the quote above is part of the second “future assumption” that the situation develops into “a proxy war.” In fact, in the text, the alleged support from western and other countries is also called a “hypothesis” and even this is based on the idea that “safe havens under international sheltering” will be set up – a weird “hypothesis” given the fact that this was never on the agenda of the US or other “western countries” and still isn’t.

Moreover when it comes to the effects on Iraq, the document expresses how alarmed the source is about this dangerous situation, a view almost certainly shared by the DIA. The fact that the FSA (the only time the document mentions it) had taken over parts of the Syrian-Iraqi border is presented as “a dangerous and serious threat” since the border is “not guarded by official elements” (ie, the Assad regime). And it is in the context of this dangerous situation, of “the situation unravelling,” that the informant raises the “possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria” – from the context, the informant sees that as part of this “dangerous and serious threat,” rather than advocating such a possibility, indeed they go straight on to discuss the “dire consequences” of this, including the possibility of AQI declaring an Islamic state across Syria and Iraq which would create a “grave danger” to Iraq’s unity!

Small wonder then that when the US finally did intervene in Iraq and Syria in 2014, it was to bomb this Islamic State, even if Milne thinks the US is not bombing it enough. It must be so difficult for the Assadophilic “left” to see, day after day, that the US is not only not bombing the greatest purveyor of massive violence in the region – the Assad regime – but in addition is sharing intelligence with Assad, sometimes launching joint bombing of ISIS—ruled territories and civilians with Assad, and also bombing other, non-ISIS, opponents of Assad, especially Nusra, but also even the Islamic Front.

Comment by Gilbert Achcar:

My final point on the DIA document is to just quote a response from Gilbert Achcar:

1. Much surprised that an “intelligence” report would in the most banal way describe the geography and ethnography (THE POPULATION LIVING ON THE BORDER HAS A SOCIAL-TRIBAL STYLE, WHICH IS BOUND BY STRONG TRIBAL AND FAMILIAL MARITAL TIES) of the border area in a region that was under US occupation for nine years, and from which the US had completed withdrawal less than one year earlier. Reads as if the report is based on a loose talk by an “informant” and written by a novice.
2. The document formulates a *HYPOTHESIS*:
   OPPOSITION FORCES ARE TRYING TO CONTROL THE EASTERN AREAS (HASAKA AND DER ZOR), ADJACENT TO THE WESTERN IRAQI PROVINCES (MOSUL AND ANBAR), IN ADDITION TO NEIGHBORING TURKISH BORDERS. WESTERN COUNTRIES, THE GULF STATES AND TURKEY ARE SUPPORTING THESE EFFORTS. THIS HYPOTHESIS IS MOST LIKELY IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE DATA FROM RECENT EVENTS, WHICH WILL HELP PREPARE SAFE HAVENS UNDER INTERNATIONAL SHELTERING, SIMILAR TO WHAT TRANSPIRED IN LIBYA WHEN BENGHAZI WAS CHOSEN AS THE COMMAND CENTER OF THE TEMPORARY GOVERNMENT.

Since the *hypothesis* is predicated on the view that “Western countries” are preparing a repetition of the Libyan scenario, it is clear that the “informant” is closer to the opposite side (most probably, the Iraqi government) than to those to whom he (certainly not a she in the context!) attributes this intention.

3. It is against the backdrop of this much biased and flawed hypothesis-making that one should read the “sensational” statement:
   IF THE SITUATION UNRAVELS THERE IS THE POSSIBILITY OF ESTABLISHING A DECLARED OR UNDECLARED SALAFIST PRINCIPALITY IN EASTERN SYRIA (HASAKA AND DER ZOR), AND THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THE SUPPORTING POWERS TO THE OPPOSITON WANT, IN ORDER TO ISOLATE THE SYRIAN REGIME, WHICH IS CONSIDERED THE STRATEGIC DEPTH OF THE SHJA EXPANSION (IRAQ AND IRAN).
4. The assumption that this is an Iraqi government source is confirmed by statements like this one: THE IRAQI BORDER GUARD FORCES ARE FACING A BORDER WITH SYRIA THAT IS NOT GUARDED BY OFFICIAL ELEMENTS WHICH PRESENTS A DANGEROUS AND SERIOUS THREAT.

Actually the whole document reads very clearly like one coming from a source from within the Iraqi government, or close to it. Basing “revelations” on this is like taking a “secret” report by a source close to the Syrian regime as a proof of what the Syrian opposition had in mind. No surprise that it is “NOT FINALLY EVALUATED INTELLIGENCE”. It is actually just worthless rubbish of the kind the files of the “intelligence” services are full of.

(end of Achcar’s comment)

Conclusion

ISIS of course is an arch-enemy of the Syrian revolution, so ironically enough, as a supporter of this revolution, it might actually serve my purposes to also go all conspiratorial and assert that “US imperialism created ISIS,” not to get at the Assad regime of course, but precisely in order to help Assad derail the uprising into a sectarian war. The reasons I oppose this conspiracism are two-fold. First, because I believe basing arguments on facts is better than writing endless bullshit, which should be a severe embarrassment to those on the left promoting it. Secondly, because most of this conspiracism is not motivated by showing that imperialist powers tried to derail the revolution by backing ISIS, but on the contrary, they want to claim that the US and the West “backed ISIS” in order to overthrow the Syrian tyranny, a laughable idea.

In particular, this leads them into these grossly dishonest and fact-free amalgam between ISIS and its arch-enemies among the Syrian revolutionary forces; and hence the continuous assertion, backed by the flimsiest of evidence or none at all, that the US and the West have backed other parts of the Syrian rebellion (something regarded to be bad) is also described as part of the how the West allegedly helped “fuel the rise of ISIS,” as if the FSA, the force in the region that has most successfully beat back ISIS, is in some way related to ISIS or gave rise to it. And all these forces, not only ISIS, or even Nusra, but all Syrian armed rebellion against the fascist regime are labelled “terrorists” by this “leftist” hasbarra, mimicking the very worst forms of imperialist and Zionist propaganda. This is particularly disgusting slander, especially considering that the big majority of ISIS victims have been Syrian rebel fighters.

Yes, the US created ISIS alright – by invading Iraq and launching an apocalyptic occupation and then bolstering a Shiite-sectarian regime allied with Iran which launched a sectarian war against the Sunni population – yes, this did bolster the most extreme Sunni sectarian forces among the Iraqi resistance, namely al-Qaida in Iraq which became ISIS. Many “anti—imperialists” are at least able to admit this part, because it puts direct blame on the US. Why is it so difficult to see that exactly the same dynamic occurred in Syria, not from some non-existent US invasion, but due to the similar apocalyptic sectarian war the Assad regime waged against the Syrian revolution and also specifically against the Sunni majority, precisely in order to turn the non-sectarian uprising into a sectarian war.

Again: Who are the real Godfathers of ISIS? https://magpie68.wordpress.com/2015/06/05/who-are-the-real-godfathers-of-isis/

By Michael Karadjis

Key parts from the attached article below:

1. Even those handful of Syrian fighters (“rebels” is the wrong word since they are individuals, not actual Free Syrian Army groups) that the US has been trying to recruit to fight ISIS (nearly all actual rebels told the US to shove the very idea from the outset) are now rebelling and quitting. I guess, like a lot of pro-Assad “leftists” from the opposite angle, they also never bothered to read every announcement that has ever been made about the program from the outset: that it was very explicitly ONLY to fight ISIS and NOT the fascist regime (eg, see, for the 100th time, the actual CENTCOM announcement of the program: try to even find a mention of Assad:
http://www.centcom.mil/en/news/articles/initial-class-of-syrian-opposition-forces-begin-training).

As the article below states: “The issue: the American government’s demand that the rebels can’t use any of their newfound battlefield prowess or U.S.-provided weaponry against the army of Bashar al-Assad or any of its manifold proxies and allies, which include Iranian-built militias such as Lebanese Hezbollah. They must only fight ISIS, Washington insists.”

And so since the rebels – who have done more to actually fight ISIS and drive it out of great chunks of Syria than have any other armed force in either Syria or Iraq – know that the main enemy remains the regime, which massacres around 100 people every day, and that in any case it is impossible to defeat a symptom (ISIS) without defeating the cause (Assad), they in their mass never signed up; and the US, always hostile to the actual revolutionary forces like the FSA, never tried to sign up actual FSA brigades, but rather tried to “vet” individual fighters to form a new US-puppet armed force from scratch. But now it is even many of these individual few hundred potential mercs that are quitting: I guess some people are slow.

2. Even more startlingly (not for me, of course, but for anyone who STILL doesn’t get that the US intervened in Syria as Assad’s airforce): Right now, as ISIS, from its base in northeastern Aleppo province, is attacking the revolutionary forces in Aleppo, the Assad regime’s warplanes are directly helping ISIS by bombing the rebels in Aleppo: http://eaworldview.com/2015/06/syria-daily-assads-bombs-aid-islamic-state-offensive-in-aleppo-province/.

So many rebels ask the US: OK, if you say you are here in Syria to defeat ISIS (even though in fact the US spent last week being Assad’s airforce by … bombing Nusra, which is allied to the rebels, in Aleppo …), then why don’t you strike ISIS now that it is besieging Aleppo, just like you bombed ISIS when it was besieging Kobane to help the YPG?

And then the punch-line: the grossly hypocritical and self-perpetuating answer we have come to expect from the US – we can’t help the rebels as long as they are allied with Nusra – was not the one used in this case. This time, the US did us one better: the US said, we can’t bomb ISIS to help the rebels, because if we help the rebels in Aleppo, that would hurt Assad:

“We were rebuffed for the astounding reason that aiding the rebels in Aleppo would hurt Assad, which would anger the Iranians, who might then turn up the heat on U.S. troops in Iraq.” Wow. The problem with helping rebels, even against ISIS, is that it would hurt Assad, and the bigger problem is this in turn would hurt Iran. But in my opinion, while the added on bit about not wanting to get on Iran’s bad side etc is no doubt valid in itself, the quote may as well have stopped with the word “Assad.” Let’s cut to the chase: the US is not bombing Syria to help the armed masses overthrow a capitalist dictatorship, but quite the opposite.

Assad is now ISIS’s airforce, at least in selected parts of Syria, and the US is Assad’s airforce. Conspiracy? Call it whatever you like, the facts have been in our faces all along, and especially since the US began bombing.

That doesn’t have to mean they love each other or that it is a dark and deliberate conspiracy. Counterrevolutionaries can also hate each other: the US does bomb ISIS in eastern Syria, where there are few rebels, and the Assad regime also began bombing ISIS out in the east (or at least bombing civilians in ISIS-ruled areas) after the US began bombing it, in order to show its worth to the bogus US “war on terror” (in the whole year before that, Assad’s warplanes never touched ISIS). The one thing none of them will do however is help the revolutionary masses to stave off one another. This last week or so we are seeing one of the rare moments when not just two (eg Assad and ISIS, or Assad and US) line up – that’s really, really old by now – but all three.

Some of us still use the language of class interests. While not a crystal ball, it generally seems to me to get things right – sometimes astonishingly so in the case of Syria.

Key Rebels Ready to Quit US Fight Vs ISIS
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/05/31/key-rebels-ready-to-quit-u-s-fight-vs-isis.html

They were ready to accept American guns and training. But a key rebel group can’t accept the Obama administration’s insistence that they lay off Syria’s dictator.

A centerpiece of the U.S. war plan against ISIS is in danger of collapsing. A key rebel commander and his men are ready to ready to pull out in frustration of the U.S. program to train a rebel army to beat back the terror group in Syria, The Daily Beast has learned.

The news comes as ISIS is marching on the suburbs of Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city. Rebels currently fighting the jihadists there told The Daily Beast that the U.S.-led coalition isn’t even bothering to respond to their calls for airstrikes to stop the jihadist army.

Mustapha Sejari, one of the rebels already approved for the U.S. training program, told The Daily Beast that he and his 1,000 men are on the verge of withdrawing from the program. The issue: the American government’s demand that the rebels can’t use any of their newfound battlefield prowess or U.S.-provided weaponry against the army of Bashar al-Assad or any of its manifold proxies and allies, which include Iranian-built militias such as Lebanese Hezbollah. They must only fight ISIS, Washington insists.

“We submitted the names of 1,000 fighters for the program, but then we got this request to promise not to use any of our training against Assad,” Sejari, a founding member of the Revolutionary Command Council, said. “It was a Department of Defense liaison officer who relayed this condition to us orally, saying we’d have to sign a form. He told us, ‘We got this money from Congress for a program to fight ISIS only.’ This reason was not convincing for me. So we said no.”

“[My men] don’t want to be beholden to this policy because it can be used against them in Syria—that they’ve betrayed the revolution and now they’re just mercenaries for the coalition forces.”
Sejari’s possible departure wouldn’t just mean the loss of a few fighters for the anti-ISIS army the U.S. is trying to assemble. It could mean a fracturing of the entire program—a cornerstone of the Obama administration’s plan to fight ISIS in Syria. (The Pentagon was unable to respond to requests to comment for this article.)
“The train and equip program will be structurally impaired for as long as those taking part in it are asked to target jihadists first and the regime second,” Charlie Winter, an ISIS specialist at the London-based Quilliam Foundation, told The Daily Beast. “It would be naïve to think otherwise: no opposition group will take kindly to being told that they can only be assisted if they focus their efforts on ‘terrorists’ and not the regime that got Syria to this position in the first place.”

Even worse, Sejari added, is that by openly aligning with the United States as a counterterrorism proxy, his troops will have a bullseye painted on its back for all comers, al Qaeda, the regime, Iran and Hezbollah. That force, the al-Ezz Front, broke off from Saudi-backed umbrella opposition group that was routed by Jabhat al-Nusra, the al Qaeda affiliate, in northern Syria in March.
“[My men] don’t want to be beholden to this policy because it can be used against them in Syria—that they’ve betrayed the revolution and now they’re just mercenaries for the coalition forces,” Sejari said.

Sejari has worked for years with the so-called “joint operations command” in Turkey, where the CIA and a host of Western and regional spy agencies have coordinated with vetted moderate rebels—sometimes arming them, although without the stifling proscription on whom they couldn’t fight. “In the past, we got some support through the [Western-backed] Friends of Syria group. Very small amounts. We were hoping there would be more support from the Americans,” Sefjari said.

“The American intelligence services have a fair idea who the good guys and bad guys are in Syria and they know which groups are fighting both extremism and dictatorship,” Sejari said. “If the Obama administration were sincere in putting an end to the suffering of the Syrian people, they could do that in three months.”

As approved by Congress, the Syrian train-and-equip program would be overseen not by intelligence officers but by the American
military—definitely in Jordan and Turkey, and likely also in Saudi Arabia and in Qatar. But Ankara and Washington have never agreed on the remit of the mission, with Turkey insisting that these rebels be given air support given that they’ll be targets of the regime’s fighter jets and attack helicopters. Although U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter has floated the idea of American air support for the rebels publicly, the administration hasn’t committed to that and likely won’t. According to the Wall Street Journal, Obama worries that if any of his built-up Arab strike teams go after the regime in Syria, then Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps-Quds Force will instruct its Shia militias to turn their guns on U.S. personnel in Iraq.

The original goal was to graduate 5,000 battle-ready rebels per year, although the program has suffered numerous setbacks and delays since its inception. In early May, Carter told reporters at a Pentagon press conference that just 90 rebels were being put through the first round of training in Jordan. Col. Patrick Ryder, a spokesman for CENTCOM, claimed that 3,700 Syrians had volunteered in total, but of that number just 400 were approved with another 800 were being processed. This followed from an earlier announcement, in April, that Major General Michael Nagata, the man tapped by Obama spearhead train-and-equip, was stepping down for unknown reasons. It doesn’t inspire confidence, Sejari said, that he didn’t know who was in charge of the program he wants nothing to do with anymore. “We don’t know what happened to Gen. Nagata. No one tells us anything,” he added. Sejari said that even if he were to sign up, he doesn’t think the result would greatly alter the balance of power in Syria or further stated U.S. objectives.

“If anyone with any military knowledge examines this program, he will realize this program is not designed to make an impact or support the Syrian people. It will only contribute to dragging out this conflict much longer,” Sejari said. “We’ve been fighting for four years. Program, no program— we’ve been fighting for four years. If the Americans don’t change this precondition, we will carry on fighting.”

In another uninspiring development for the Levantine arm of the war, a major rebel commander has told The Daily Beast that no matter how hard he tries, he still cannot get the coalition’s attention for directing airstrikes against ISIS. And that’s allowing the jihadists to make major gains near the city of Aleppo, a stronghold of both moderate and Islamist rebels.

“We were hoping that we could work hand-in-hand with coalition forces to defeat ISIS and that the coalition would launch strikes against ISIS-held positions in northeast Aleppo. We called on them to do so,” Brig. Gen. Zaher al-Saket told The Daily Beast in a May 29 Skype interview.

Al-Saket defected from the Syrian Army in March 2013. He had been an officer in Assad’s chemical weapons division and today heads both the Aleppo Military Council and the Chemical Weapons Documentation Center, which compiles evidence of chlorine gas attacks perpetrated by his former comrades on Syrian civilians.
“For the past 24 hours, numerous towns in the northern Aleppo suburbs have been under constant bombardment by Daesh,” al-Shaket said, using a derogatory name for ISIS. “The jihadists captured Sarwan, a key town, and is now advancing on two others including Marea, the nerve center for the rebel groups in Aleppo. The fall of Marea would severely weaken our capacity across the province. Hundreds of shells have rained on houses in Sawran and Marea. Ninety percent of the civilians in Marea had to flee to neighboring areas because their houses were destroyed. The terrorism carried out by ISIS is not very different from the terrorism being carried out by Assad.”

And in some ways, Assad’s Syria Arab Army (SAA) and ISIS are helping one another around Aleppo, where the regime is reported bombing rebel positions. “By attacking opposition positions around northern Aleppo, ISIS has granted the Assad regime a tactical opportunity, one that it has already begun exploiting,” Winter said. “This is not the first time the SAA and ISIS have benefited each other, and it will not be the last.”

For weeks, al-Saket has made numerous media appearances in Arabic-language outlets such as Al Jazeera and Orient TV calling for close coordination between his rebels and the coalition. He said he has precise coordinates for ISIS-controlled installations and materiel in towns such as Raei, Manbej, al-Bab in the Aleppo suburbs. But so far, no one from U.S. Central Command—the arm of the American military responsible for the Middle East—has reached out to him.

ISIS launched their assault on northern Aleppo before the weekend, apparently after it caught wind of a the Syrian opposition’s plan to retake the rest of the province from the Assad regime, putting it in control of key supply corridors currently trafficked by ISIS.

The rebels’ idea is to replicate the success of Jaysh al-Fateh, a
consortium of Islamist and jihadist rebel groups, largely led by al-Nusra, which has had stunning successful in driving the regime out of Idlib province over the past month. Al-Saket said that while al-Nusra is not part of forces under his command, there was no denying that the al Qaeda franchise was also at war with ISIS in the province. “If ISIS is able to capture all the northern suburbs of Aleppo, that would mean they’d control the borders with Turkey. I don’t have to tell you what this means for the rebels.”

As al-Saket spoke to The Beast, he was interrupted by a fresh intelligence report from his field commanders saying that that white cars with blue covers were currently en route from Dabiq, an
ISIS-controlled town in northern Aleppo, toward Hetemlat whence they’d no doubt proceed onto Marea. The cars were outfitted with explosives and driven by ISIS suicide bombers.

“The Syrian-American community asked the Obama dministration for airstrikes on ISIS near Marea many months ago,” complained Mohammed al-Ghanem, the senior political advisor for the Syrian American Council, a Washington, D.C.-based opposition group in constant contact with the Aleppo Military Council. “We were rebuffed for the astounding reason that aiding the rebels in Aleppo would hurt Assad, which would anger the Iranians, who might then turn up the heat on U.S. troops in Iraq. The rebels are the only ones who can fight ISIS in northern Syria—Assad forces are losing ground rather quickly now—so I hope President Obama will reconsider his willingness to compromise the ISIS fight for the sake of an Iran deal.”

“ISIS is a metastasizing threat, not just for Syria but for the world,” al-Saket agreed, before hanging up to tend to the incoming car bombs.

By Michael Karadjis

Long ago, someone called Jay Tharappel (see note* on Tharappel at end of this contribution) responded to my article ‘Assad Regime Responsible for Rise in Religious Sectarianism’ (http://links.org.au/node/3714) with an article, Syria: Countering Sectarian Apologetics for Imperialist Sponsored Bloodshed (http://dissidentvoice.org/2014/04/syria-countering-sectarian-apologetics-for-imperialist-sponsored-bloodshed/).

While my reasons for not responding were related to time and priorities, as it turned out precisely this passage of time has allowed us to better judge Tharappel’s premise in his title: the idea that the Syrian rebellion against Bashar Assad’s tyrannical sectarian regime is “imperialist-orchestrated bloodshed,” a view that allowed him to slander me as a “loyal servant of U.S. imperialism,” in the best traditions of the so-called “anti-imperialist” left.

Like the rest of this bogus “anti-imperialist” camp, he will have wilfully refused to look reality in the face ever since, and no doubt pretends that the last 8 months of *actual* imperialist intervention (unlike the imaginary one in August 2013) doesn’t exist. That is, the real intervention of US imperialism, with the full and open support of the Syrian regime, in collaborating with Assad in joint bombing expeditions against Raqqa civilians (nicknamed “against ISIS”); in actively bombing ISIS to defend the regime’s control over Deir Ezzor airport (so that regime can continue to use the airport to bomb children to bits all over Syria); in sharing intelligence with the regime; in mysteriously having US drones flying overhead just before regime bombings; in bombing not only ISIS but also Nusra and even the Islamic Front and sometimes even, mistakenly we assume, the FSA, anyone in Syria other than the regime; at the same time as the US is in an even more open joint war on the side of Iran and its proxy Iraqi regime and Shiite sectarian death squads against the Sunni population of Iraq.

Perhaps I could now respond and declare Tharappel and his ilk “loyal servants of U.S. imperialism,” but I don’t need to: for me, being a servant of a regime as fascistic and barbarous as that of Assad, which has turned the whole of Syria into a blood-drenched moonscape, was already damning enough long before the US-Assad alliance came out in the open, even when the “anti-imperialist” left actually had an argument, of sorts: fact is, I don’t share their logic, so I don’t feel the need to slander them for being anything other than they openly claim to be, ie, loyal servants of a savage capitalist tyranny.

So formalities out of the way, let’s get down to the content of Tharappel’s arguments.

My main contentions

The main part of his argument, on the sectarian or otherwise nature of the Syrian regime, is in fact a relatively coherent argument, and if he’d stuck to that as an empirical exercise, then I concede he has some good points, while some of mine could be seen as problematic. My argument was based on an analysis of the make-up of important parts of the regime, revealing the overwhelming domination of the Alawite element, and in particular, of the Assad family, and the connection of this largely Alawite, family-based elite with the country’s mega-capitalist oligarchy, both Alawite and Sunni.

Moreover, it is the open sectarian war waged against the Sunni masses by such a regime, including by irregular sectarian Alawite-based death squads, that is the main cause of the rise of sectarianism within sectors of the opposition and among significant sectors of the Sunni population. My view was that this cause was primary and overwhelming compared to the important, but secondary, role of sectors of the Gulf bourgeoisie (mostly the oppositional bourgeoisie rather than the regimes) in fomenting Sunni sectarian politics, which in turn has played into the hands of the regime and undermined the revolution.

Note that, when Tharappel writes that “according to Karadjis, the insurgent-led campaign of hatred and violence against Alawis is the government’s fault because it’s dominated by sectarian Alawis,” even if we ignore the sweeping nature of the slander against the vast and multi-layered uprising much of which was never sectarian, he is also only telling his readers the first half of my argument. The sectarian dynamic was not created because the regime is “dominated by sectarian Alawites,” but because this effectively Alawite-dominated “secular” regime launched an unlimited war against the Sunni populations for reasons of preserving a dictatorship, not because the Baathist criminals are ideologically “sectarian Alawites.”

In my view, the fundamentals of what I wrote were correct and are well-known. However, Tharappel makes a number of reasonable points in relation to the make-up of the regime and my argument.

The offending chart

First, he points out that the chart I base my claims on (http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/all-the-tyrants-men-chipping-away-at-the-assad-regimes-core) was provided by the US think tank, the Washington Institute for Near East policy, which specialises in strategic concerns for US domination and US war-making in the Middle East. He implies that this may make the chart doubtful. Anything coming from such a source needs to be treated with caution, and if Tharappel had better information about its claims he could have provided it. As he didn’t, I suggest the data was broadly correct; “think tanks” do not exist to spread public propaganda to bullshit the masses; imperialism has different institutions, such as Fox News, for that purpose. Think tanks are aimed at readers and ideologues from the ruling class itself, and a certain level of accuracy –within their framework – is necessary for them to be of any use.

The chart, after all, was not something flashed all over the world via some screaming headline, but on the contrary, something one would need to dig hard to get hold of.

What then of the content? Tharappel writes that the chart “doesn’t actually specify what exactly is being mapped … it doesn’t provide any categories, it’s nothing more than a collection of some but not all military figures, cabinet ministers, and business people.” Since I used this chart to create some crude figures about the proportion of Alawites in the regime (eg, “some 10-15 per cent of the population, occupy some 72 per cent of the regime”), he derides this is as “incompetent and lazy” analysis.

I concede his point that one cannot tell exactly what the composition of the entire regime is based on this data, and therefore my precise-sounding figures were rather sweeping. However, a close look at the “some but not all” important posts makes it clear that these are of central importance to the regime, and the positions listed are the leading positions within these central areas, and therefore the data is not quite as anarchic as Tharappel suggests.

Absolute Alawite domination of the military-security apparatus

Moreover, as I wrote:

“Alawite elements are absolutely dominant within the military and security elements of the regime — including head of the Republican Guard, chief of staff of the armed forces, head of military intelligence, head of the air force intelligence, director of the National Security Bureau, head of presidential security.” Given that my main point was about the total war being waged against the Sunni masses by the military-security apparatus, Alawite domination of these sectors is the fundamental issue. In any case, the chart also shows a number of centrally important sections of the regime outside the military-security apparatus.

These are well-established facts and hardly controversial. In fact, according to Stratfor, quoted by Gilbert Achcar, “Some 80 percent of officers in the army are also believed to be Alawites. The military’s most elite division, the Republican Guard, led by the president’s younger brother Maher al Assad, is an all-Alawite force. Syria’s ground forces are organized in three corps (consisting of combined artillery, armor and mechanized infantry units). Two corps are led by Alawites.” Achcar continues: “Even though most of Syria’s air force pilots are Sunnis, most ground support crews are Alawites who control logistics, telecommunications and maintenance, thereby preventing potential Sunni air force dissenters from acting unilaterally. Syria’s air force intelligence, dominated by Alawites, is one of the strongest intelligence agencies within the security apparatus and has a core function of ensuring that Sunni pilots do not rebel against the regime” (http://www.opendemocracy.net/arab-awakening/gilbert-achcar/syrian-army-and-its-power-pyramid).[1]

Therefore, though not all areas of government are shown in the offending chart, if we find out that non-Alawites happen to run ministries concerned with health or local environment or roads etc, then surely Tharappel would agree that this would be largely irrelevant, especially when discussing a dictatorship? In other words, if this chart showing 23 Alawites compared to only five Sunni in top positions in these central parts of the government and state apparatus is not representative of other parts of government, this may be largely irrelevant.

Moreover, I also pointed out the direct connection between the Assad-family-based Alawite clique and the Syrian big bourgeoisie, “who absolutely dominate the economy.” I pointed out that they are connected to the regime via two main branches, “large companies (oil, banking, telecom etc.) connected via Alawite, and Assad-family connected, members of the regime” including Assad’s cousins, the Makhlouf family, and “big businesses connected via the “Sunni business elite” who are in turn connected by marriage to Maher al-Assad, the president’s brother and head of the Republican Guard.” This class connection between Alawite and Sunni mega-capitalists is the main “non-sectarian” aspect of the regime.

Tharappel comes up with what he considers a better set of figures: the sect-based composition of successive Syrian cabinets up to the mid-1990s averaged 68.37 percent Sunnis and 20.41 percent Alawites. He notes that no figures exist since then, and claims there is no reason to think this has changed in the last 20 years, but precisely this is entirely unclear given the data presented. Let us say that neither he nor I know this for sure. All we do know for sure is that, even if these figures have remained much the same, they are overruled precisely by the overwhelming Alawite domination of the military-security apparatus.

Still, he points out that the mere “overrepresentation of a particular sect” in a state’s institutions “doesn’t mean the state actively discriminates on the basis of sect, which is what the label “sectarian” would suggest.” This may or may not be true. But also a red herring, because neither my article, nor the main experts I quoted from, eg Thomas Pierret, made this claim. No, the Assad regime is not religious-sectarian like its Iranian and Iraqi allies. Its Baathist ideology truly is “secular,” in the same way, for example, as mainstream Zionism, and fascism, and American neo-conservatism, are secular. Rather, the long-term sect-based nature of the regime is due to the very nature of capitalist power in Syria (something not unusual for secular regimes, eg, the Sunni political domination in Baathist Iraq); and the post-2011 decision to wage a sectarian war was a cynical and diabolical political decision aimed at keeping the ruling clique in power, nothing to do with any ideological sectarianism.

And apart from the fact that this regime-imposed sectarian war is the main cause for the more general descent into sectarianism in Syria, the other relevant issue arising out of such absolute sect-domination of the state I pointed out in my original article, and I’ll repeat here, by again quoting Syria expert Thomas Pierret:

“The kin-based/sectarian nature of the military is what allows the regime to be not merely “repressive”, but to be able to wage a full-fledged war against its own population. Not against a neighboring state, an occupied people or a separatist minority, but against the majority of the population, including the inhabitants of the metropolitan area (i.e. Damascus and its suburbs). There are very few of such cases in modern history … No military that is reasonably representative of the population could do what the Syrian army did over the last two years, i.e. destroying most of the country’s major cities, including large parts of the capital. You need a sectarian or ethnic divide that separates the core of the military from the target population.” (http://angryarab.blogspot.com.au/2013/04/angry-arab-interviews-thomas-pierret-on.html).

And this remains clearer than ever: Pierret is correct – I cannot think of such a total war being waged by a ruling class against “its own” population rather than against “a neighbouring state, an occupied people or a separatist minority;” the medal for this remarkable achievement goes to the regime that the likes of Tharappel defend.

Sources of Alawite domination of the repressive apparatus

Tharappel continues that even “to the extent that Alawis are overrepresented in government, their power doesn’t stem from their Alawi heritage” – exactly true, my article after all stressed that elite power in Syria is as much “Assad-family based” as “Alawite” in general and no one suggested anything about “Alawite heritage” (??), and more importantly, that “their sect holds no official privileges, and they’re not economically better off than other Syrians.”

By and large I agree with this, and the fact that a great many Alawites are as poor as the bulk of Sunni who are in rebellion against the regime means we need to distinguish between this situation in Syria and the situation in Israel, for example. In the latter, although an Israeli working class exists, and we would need to distinguish between the actions of the ruling class and Israeli people in general, nevertheless we recognise that this is made difficult by the vast level of privilege which the Israeli Jewish population derives from the Zionist conquest of Palestine.

Generally speaking, the Israel situation is similar to that which previously existed in apartheid South Africa in terms of white privilege, while the Syrian situation is analogous to that that existed under Baathist rule in Iraq (or in reverse under Shiite sectarian rule now): Hussein-connected Sunnis dominated the state apparatus and a narrow clique derived great power and privilege from these positions, but the Iraqi Sunni then (and the Iraqi Shia today) are “not economically better off than other Iraqis.” Incidentally, I wonder if the average Shiite in Saudi Arabia or Kuwait is necessarily worse off than the average Sunni in those countries.

However, Syria expert Fabrice Balanche, noting that the initial uprising in 2011 aimed “to get rid of Assad, the state bureaucracy, the Baath Party, the intelligence services, and the general staff of the Syrian Arab Army,” that is, was at heart a democratic revolt against a repressive state, goes on to explain how this very fact could not help but tap an existing sectarian dynamic inherent in the Baathist set-up, because “all of these bodies are packed with Alawites, over 90 percent of whom work for the state” (http://carnegieendowment.org/syriaincrisis/?fa=58875). If this figure is roughly true, then, while certainly “working” for the state does not necessarily convey any kind of upper or even middle class status, it does clearly put the average Alawite in a relatively privileged position compared to the average Sunni, greatly complicating the central strategic task of the revolution of overcoming the sectarian divides.

Tharappel, however, has a theory as to why Alawites are “overrepresented in the military” (ie, why they *overwhelmingly* dominate among top military *leadership*, to put it honestly):

“Prior to Syria gaining independence in 1946, families who wished to exempt their boys from military conscription (under the French mandate) would have pay a fee, which many Alawis, being a generally poorer community, couldn’t afford to pay. Moreover many considered it a lucrative career option because the military in their eyes was one of the few meritocratic institutions they could join to get ahead in life, and one where they wouldn’t be discriminated against because of their beliefs. According to former President Hafez Al Assad’s biographer Patrick Seale, “young men from minority backgrounds made for the army in droves rather than for other professions because their families did not have the means to send them to university” (p. 38).”

He concludes that the more striking thing about the Syrian armed forces today is not “the overrepresentation of any particular sect,” but “rather its class character. After independence, young men from poorer rural backgrounds began swelling the ranks of the army whereas their urban counterparts were more likely to serve their two year term in the military before returning to more profitable careers in the cities.” Tharappel adds that “For someone who loves talking about class, Karadjis is unable or unwilling to recognise the elitist origins of anti Alawi sectarianism.”

There is so much in this loaded section that it is hard to know where to begin. Even if all this were true, one might well quip that some people live so far in the past that they believe they can analyse politics as if nothing has changed in the world in the last 50 or 70 years. British rulers, for example, promoted members of the Tamil minority to high positions in Sri Lanka to divide and rule; after independence, the new Sinhala dominated state actively oppressed Tamils for decades. Perhaps the Sinhala chauvinists refer back to the past in the same way Tharappel attempts to. Similar points could be made about north and south in Uganda, about Hutu and Tutsi in Rwanda and Burundi, about Greeks and Turks in Cyprus, about indigenous Fijians and Indians in Fiji and countless other places ruled by colonialism.

Thus even if entirely true, I’m not sure how the fact that poorer, marginalised Alawites joining the military back in French colonial times (up to 1945) would justify decades of absolute Alawite domination of the Baathist state, especially since the Assad coup in 1970. One might expect a modern state to try to overcome colonial legacies in 70 years. Speaking of “class,” one might wonder whether, even if anti-Alawite sectarianism had “elitist origins,” decades of incorporation of a highly disproportionate number of the Alawite minority into the ruling class via the military and state apparatus, while the overwhelming mass of Sunni are desperately poor peasants and slum-dwellers, might have changed the class arrangement?

In fact, far from declining with time, the domination of the state apparatus by Alawites greatly increased under Assad, decades after the end of colonialism. Achcar quotes from Hanna Batatu (http://www.opendemocracy.net/arab-awakening/gilbert-achcar/syrian-army-and-its-power-pyramid):

“Out of the thirty-one officers whom Assad singled out between 1970 and 1997 for prominent or key posts in the armed forces, the elite military units, and the intelligence and security networks, no fewer than nineteen were drawn from his ‘Alawite sect, including eight from his own tribe and four others from his wife’s tribe; and of the latter twelve, as many as seven from kinsmen closely linked to him by ties of blood or marriage.…

“Apart from the special regime-shielding military formations, over which they had all along exclusive control, ‘Alawite generals commanded in 1973 only two out of the five regular army divisions but in 1985 no fewer than six – and in 1992 as many as seven – out of the nine divisions now constituting Syria’s regular army.”

In fact, while the early more leftist Baath regimes (1963-70) may have attracted a lot of Alawite support partially for the class reasons Tharappel claims, Achcar notes the irony that Assad’s right-wing coup in 1970 was more welcomed by many Sunni, ie, the Sunni mercantile elite, who he began the process of enriching. However, when Assad was confronted by the 1978-82 rebellion, his “dependence on his kinsmen and the Alawite brass and soldiery intensified and became the indispensable safeguard of his paramount power,” in other words, the beginning of the real effective sectarianisation of repressive forces’ officialdom was entirely about maintaining an elite in power and divorced in time and substance from class-related issues of earlier periods.

Nevertheless, returning to the issue of colonial legacies, is it possible that Tharappel is telling only part of the story? What about the part in which the French deliberately promoted the Alawite minority, in the same way as the British promoted certain minorities (or like the current Baathist regime continues to do), precisely in order to divide and rule, to have a bulwark against the Sunni Arab majority they ruled over?

According to Daniel Pipes, the Alawites adopted a pro-French attitude even before the French conquest of Damascus in July 1920. “The ‘Alawis … were dedicated to the French mandate and did not send a delegation to the [General] Syrian Congress.” Using French arms, they launched a rebellion against Prince Faysal, the Sunni Arab ruler of Syria in 1918-20. In 1919, French General Gouraud received a telegram from 73 ‘Alawi chiefs asking for “the establishment of an independent Nusayri union” under French protection. Following the establishment of French rule, the state of Latakia was set up in 1922, with legal autonomy. Alawis “turned out in large numbers when most Syrians boycotted the French-sponsored elections of January 1926. They provided a disproportionate number of soldiers to the government, forming about half the eight infantry battalions making up the Troupes Spéciales du Levant, serving as police, and supplying intelligence. As late as May 1945, the vast majority of Troupes Spéciales remained loyal to their French commanders. ‘Alawis broke up Sunni demonstrations, shut down strikes, and quelled rebellions” (http://www.danielpipes.org/191/the-alawi-capture-of-power-in-syria). We may not like Pipes (though not sure about Tharappel – Pipes began calling on the US to support Assad from 2013), but this historical article appears very well-referenced.

Moreover, the holes in the theory Tharappel proposes are obvious, even if it is undoubtedly based on a kernel of truth. Yes, the bulk of Alawites were extremely poor. But were the bulk of Sunni really wealthy enough for their families “to send them to university”? Why are poor Alawites being compared here with Sunni merchant families in the big cities? Tharappel imagines a rather skewed class structure in French-ruled colonial Syria, one in which the Alawite 10 percent of the population were the poor, and thus had to pursue military careers, while the Sunni 70 percent of the population were the middle and upper classes who sent their kids to university! How then did we get to the stage that the overwhelming bulk of the poor peasantry, and the urban poor on the city fringes, ie, the classes today engaged in the uprising against Assad regime, are Sunni? Did this vast wealthy university-going majority all become poor under Assad? If true, it would be quite an inditement of the regime!

More likely, however, the overwhelming majority of Sunni – the majority of the population – were also desperately poor back then. So his theory may well explain the differences between a certain social layer among Sunnis and Alawites in terms of middle class social advancement, but the overwhelming bulk of the Sunni peasantry are simply left out of this picture.

So why did the majority Sunni poor not also join the army like their poor Alawite cousins? On the one hand, it is likely that many did, but the French colonial rulers (like their Baathist inheritors) tended to promote Alawite (and minority) officers for divide and rule purposes; but on the other hand, a great many didn’t precisely for nationalist reasons; according to the same Patrick Seale, who Tharappel quotes extensively, Sunni landed families “being predominantly of nationalist sentiment, despised the army as a profession: to join it between the wars was to serve the French.”

Class, the peasantry, the Baath, the Brotherhood and western leftists stuck 50 years ago

Tharappel is on somewhat firmer ground when he discusses the class issues involved at the onset of the conflict between the Muslim Brotherhood and the first Baath governments after 1963:

“The Brotherhood ultimately represented the interests of the landed elites and merchant classes … the Brotherhood’s counterparts in Syria always clashed with the post-Baathist state for entirely reactionary reasons. In 1964, just a year after the Baath party had seized power … the Muslim Brotherhood began their first insurrection, and for what reason? According to Seale it began in the souks (bazaars or marketplaces) with “prayer-leaders, preaching inflammatory sermons against the secular, socialist Baath”, that the anger stemmed from “merchants, dreading the inroads of Baathist radicalism”, and that “country notables resented the rise of the minority upstarts and their humble Sunni allies” (from Patrick Seale’s book ‘Asad’, 1995, p. 92). The Hama elites backing the Brotherhood associated the Baathists with peasant uprisings, especially since prior to the land-reforms that followed the 1963 coup, four extremely wealthy (Sunni) families owned 91 of the 113 villages in the Hama region (Seale, 1995, p. 42).”

It is widely known that the MB at the time represented urban Sunni mercantile interests and the Baath became the party supported by the poor peasants (both Sunni and Alawite) via these land reforms. Similar events were occurring at that time in Iran; while the Shah was a much more reactionary figure than the early Baath, nevertheless, the onset of his top-down bourgeois-modernising reforms in the 1963 “White Revolution” brought about a reaction led by the alliance between the bazaar and the fundamentalist Shiite clergy and headed by Khomeini, which rejected land reforms and equal rights for women.

Most people understand that it was incorrect to see the Iranian revolution, 16 years later, led by these same reactionary forces, as a simple continuation of the 1963 revolt; they understand that social changes undermine traditional class patterns. The mullahs in 1979 still represented the same bazaar merchant class, but by then the more modern, imperialist-linked mega-capitalist class that had grown up via the patronage of the Shah regime was so dominant that the bazaar merchant-mullah alliance seemed positively small-scale and petty-bourgeois and were able to lead a vast worker-peasant uprising that overthrew the Shah. Of course, the problem of being saddled by this reactionary leadership became more obvious after the Shah was overthrown, but there was little point in the left standing aside from the masses; if they were to have any chance, they needed to be in the thick of it, trying to push forward the progressive demands of the masses and defending them against the reactionary moves of the new bourgeois-clerical state that tried to consolidate itself after 1979.

Unfortunately, as history showed, they were not strong enough and the reaction won the day, and thus today we see this reactionary mullah-state acting as the phalanx of counterrevolution across the northern part of the Middle East, especially in Syria. But I assume that is not a problem for people like Tharappel who think Iran, like its Assad ally, is a “resistance” state.

But the point  here is that while most of the left could understand there had been some transformation in the mere 16 years between 1963 and 1979 in Iran, people like Tharappel imagine there to be no difference in the 50 years between 1963 and 2011 in Syria. Thus they are incapable of staring reality in the face; they tell you about the poor peasant base of the Baath in 1963, apparently clueless as to why since 2011 the revolt against Assad has above all been centred around the poor peasantry and their cousins among the first generation of urban poor on city fringes (many supporting organisations akin to the Muslim Brotherhood), while the big bourgeoisie in Damascus and Aleppo is now the main base of the Baath regime.

Indeed, already by 1979, as in Iran, there had been significant changes. On the one hand, there is no doubt that the Brotherhood’s base was still among urban mercantile interests; but the growth of the state-spawned big bourgeoisie had also come a long way. This change had begun slowly after Assad’s 1970 coup – a coup by the right-wing of the Baath Party – when a “corrective movement” against the ‘socialist’ 1960s was launched. “This new alliance strengthened over time thanks to the development of close relationships between high-ranking officials and some entrepreneurs. These relationships became so important that in 1982 Elisabeth Picard described the regime as a ‘military-mercantile’ complex – an alliance between an Alawite-dominated security apparatus (Army and Intelligence services) and some parts of the business community. The appeasement of the bourgeoisie and the co-optation of the representatives of the middle merchants and of the top layer of the commercial bourgeoisie, have lain at the core of Hafez’s strategy of consolidating the regime’s grip over the country” (http://crisisproject.org/syria-its-the-economy-stupid/).

This process, together with the weight of such a repressive state, had gone far enough for vast layers of the ordinary masses, and for a great variety of political forces, including among the left, to loosely align with the Brotherhood in a movement demanding democratic change in the late 1970s and early 1980s (this vast alliance is well-described in Merip Report No. 110, ‘Syria’s Troubles’, which I only have as hard copy). The ferocity of the regime’s repression, slaughtering tens of thousands of people in Hama and Homs in 1982, showed the regime well understood it was not merely confronting reactionary merchants and clerics. Nevertheless, the movement was of a very mixed character, with the bourgeoisie itself divided:

“When the Aleppo merchant community called for a nationwide strike in 1980, serious doubts were raised about the regime’s capacity to survive. At this moment, the Damascus merchants directly took sides with the regime and decided to keep their shops open. Despite the fact that this crisis was only overcome in 1982 with a military intervention and the shelling of Hama, killing over 20,000 people, the Damascus merchants’ spectacular support of the Ba’athist state in 1980 is said to have prevented the regime from collapsing (http://crisisproject.org/syria-its-the-economy-stupid/).

And these changes had already occurred within only 16 years after the Baath took power in 1963, yet the Tharppels write as if nothing continued to change in the next 30 years after that! Most analysts know that Bashar Assad’s neo-liberal transformations since the onset of this century radically changed the support bases of regime and opposition; cutting agricultural and other subsidies, launching industrial and agricultural privatisation, allowing renewed land concentration (ie reversing precisely what had gained the Baath peasant support in 1963), and countless other well-known moves drove poverty rates, especially rural rates, sky high. “Development” was concentrated in areas where state-connected capitalists could make a buck, leaving major rural-based cities – places where the uprising has been concentrated – to rot. Meanwhile, the rural disaster led to mass migration to city peripheries, another base of the uprising. These changes have been very well-documented, I hardly feel the need to give references; perhaps I would just recommend you reading anything by Bassam Chit, among countless others.

In a word, the poor rural dwellers had been transformed from the base of the Baath in 1963 to base of the anti-Baath uprising in 2011, but some still haven’t noticed; the big bourgeoisie of Damascus and Aleppo have become much bigger and largely transferred their allegiance from the traditionalist MB to the modernised, neo-liberal Baath; and a variety of grass-roots Islamist organisations, mostly of a moderate nature and sometimes tenuously connected to the MB (which as an organisation is mostly exile-based) have tended to express the social conservatism among the traditional layers of the poor peasantry and urban poor leading the uprising, layers who were never actually “secular” even when they were Baath supporters.

Needless to say, as in Iran long ago, many of these petty-bourgeois Islamist leaderships also pose political problems for the future, which the left and democratic forces and the masses will have to confront. One of the differences with Iran before 1979 is that organisations like Jabhat al-Nusra, and the Jaysh Islam group in Damascus, have already given a ‘heads up’ to the FSA and the democratic revolutionaries more generally, and so we see the latter walking a fine line between the necessary cooperation with groups like Nusra in fighting the regime, and continual FSA clashes with Nusra and demonstrations against Nusra’s actions amongst revolution-supporting populations. A recent popular revolt against Jaysh Islam (described below), indicated in a particularly clear way the kinds of class cleavages that we should expect more of if we were to see the regime’s overthrow.

Apologetics for the Assadist mega-capitalist plutocracy

On a side-point, Tharappel, in his odd attempt to give Bashar Assad’s neo-liberal disaster some ‘social’ characteristics, claims that the state economic sector still accounts for 40 percent of GDP, failing to note that this was considerably lower than that of Mubarak’s Egypt (supposedly 70 percent of GDP in the 1990s according to the World Bank, http://tinyurl.com/ptj22n), and many other countries (at a socialist conference in Turkey in the 1990s, I was told the state still held, officially, some 80-90 percent of industry, decades after the death of Ataturk, and with the Turkish military-state already a long-term NATO asset). The trajectory of all the state-centric bourgeois-nationalist regimes that arose in the Middle East (and elsewhere) in the 1950s and 1960s was that of consolidating a new bourgeoisie via the “middle class” elements (military officers, intellectuals etc) that took over the bourgeois state apparatus. There was never anything “socialist” about it – Nasserism led to Sadatism without a whimper. But what this also means is that figures such as “40%” or “70%” and so on often have little meaning, because the actual state of privatisation and even of sheer plunder of the state apparatus by these layers and their families and connected businesses is often well in advance of the official state of affairs.

And a good example of this outright plunder is precisely that of Assad’s first cousin, Rami Makhlouf, which my article showed was an example of direct connection between the mega-capitalist class and the military-security apparatus (and of course the extended tentacles of the ruling family). Rather than grapple with this reality, Tharappel chooses a side-point – my assertion that Makhlouf “controls 40-60 percent of the Syrian economy” – to claim this is an example of my “Alawi-phobic conspiracy.”

Tharappel questions what this figure means and suggests instead that as Makhlouf’s net worth is reportedly about $5 billion, we can say that he owns “roughly 6 percent of Syria’s GDP.”

OK, so let’s go with that for the moment. Australian GDP in 2014 was reported to be some US$1560 billion, while Forbes Asia estimated Gina Rinehart’s wealth in 2014 to be US$17.6 billion. This means the wealth of Australia’s richest person is about 1.3% of GDP, less than a quarter of the equivalent percentage of Syrian GDP he says is owned by Makhlouf. I think Tharappel knows what most leftists and socialists in Australia think about Rinehart and about a system that allows such sensational concentrations of wealth. Yet he draws no conclusions about this in relation to the economic system presided over by Makhlouf’s cousin, the Syrian tyrant. He merely thinks there might be some problem of “corruption.”

But of course the 60 percent figure does not mean personal wealth; “control” of the economy is estimated via the various holding companies that he has significant or dominant stakes in. According to the Financial Times,

“Mr Makhlouf controls as much as 60 per cent of the country’s economy through a complex web of holding companies. His business empire spans industries ranging from telecommunications, oil, gas and construction, to banking, airlines and retail. He even owns the country’s only duty free business as well as several private schools. This concentration of power, say bankers and economists, has made it almost impossible for outsiders to conduct business in Syria without his consent” (http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/e29a73f8-6b78-11e0-a53e-00144feab49a.html#axzz3Uq0sUEsa). Likewise Gilbert Achcar gives a good description of what this means in his excellent book, The People Want, see the page at http://tinyurl.com/q956w44.

Once again, we are left wondering how someone claiming to be a leftist can draw no conclusions about a system that allows a single individual (not to mention the dictator’s cousin) to control telecommunications, oil, gas, construction, banking, airlines, retail, duty free business and education, while also being directly connected to the repressive forces.

The ubiquitous sectarian war waged by the Assad regime from Day One

Returning to my *main* point – that the Syrian regime is responsible for the rise of sectarianism not simply because of its domination by one sect but because this sect-heavy regime has waged bloody sectarian warfare against the Sunni majority from Day One, both via the irregular Alawite death squads (Shabiha) and the regime’s destruction of entire Sunni cities, Tharappel attempts to discredit this, asserting:

“the three examples he cites to support this point, i.e. Houla, Bayda and Banyas, are ALL proven false flag attacks that were actually carried out by the so called “revolutionaries” the Imperial-Left love so much.”

First, on the well-known Houla massacre of mid-2012, he claims “the story blaming the government was debunked by the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.”

Noone reading this can be sure why one story in one German bourgeois newspaper is the final word on this massacre. After all, why not the story in another German newspaper, Spiegel (http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/a-look-back-at-the-houla-massacre-in-syria-a-845854.html), that actually got reporters into the area, and completely debunked the Frankfurter Allegmaine Zeitung story, and conclusively showed that it was the regime that perpetrated this horror? Why not the final, greatly detailed, 102-page UN report on the massacre (http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2012/aug/15/un-inquiry-syrian-arab-republic) that showed beyond a shadow of a doubt the regime’s responsibility? Never mind, supporters of some fascist regime have their preferred article, no matter how discredited it has since been.

It is not as if the regime’s Houla massacre was the only one around that time. Soon after, the neighbouring village of Qubair was attacked by Shabiha thugs, who killed 78 people, half of them women and children, once again involving horrific killings with knives, burning etc (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/second-syrian-massacre-qubairs-killing-fields-7827900.html).

In August 2012, Syrian troops and Shabiha committed an appalling massacre of at least 200 men, women and children in the pro-rebel Damascus suburb Daraya, with some reports of up to 500 or more killed (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/aug/26/syrian-regime-accused-daraya-massacre; http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/aug/28/syria-worst-massacre-daraya-death-toll-400?newsfeed=true; http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/sep/07/syria-daraya-massacre-ghost-town; http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/27/world/middleeast/dozens-of-bodies-are-found-in-town-outside-damascus.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&ref=syria). According to one of the first reporters to get in after the massacre, Janine di Giovanni:

“People hid in basements, and when the army arrived some were pulled out and killed outside; others were sprayed with machine-gun fire, Rashid says. “We had some informers who pointed out where opposition people were. They let the women run away but they shot the men one by one. In some cases, they went into the basement and killed old men and children – just because they were boys.” His wife’s four brothers and three nephews were among the victims.”

One of the most despicable things about this massacre is that, under relentless regime shelling for days, the FSA actually left the town on August 23, in the hope of sparing the local people the regime’s slaughter; once the FSA left, the regime’s killers went in, in a replay of the Sabra-Shatilla scenario.

Of course I will expect Tharappel and his ilk to reply that the FSA massacred their own families, and base this on a report by embedded “journalist” Robert Fisk, who rode into the town with Assad army units and “questioned” residents. While anyone with a brain would see that this was equivalent to riding into a Jewish death camp on a Nazi tank as far as validity of research goes, the fact that this low point for Fisk has been taken seriously by anyone is indicative of how low some of the standards of “journalism” have fallen with regard to Syria. Here is a good response to Fisk’s disastrous degeneration: http://qunfuz.com/2012/08/28/to-kill-and-to-walk-in-the-funeral-procession/

Stunningly, Tharappel even tries to link the massive slaughter of hundreds of Sunni villagers in Banias and Bayda, in Lattakia province, in May 2013 with the opposition, based entirely, it seems, on the identity of one family among these hundreds. This is quite an ambitious claim. UN investigators, for example, established that the Syrian regime and its Shabiha death squads were responsible for this massacre of up  to, they claimed, 450 men, women and children – killed, as in all these other instances, in horrific ways which, ironically enough, would now be called being killed “ISIS-style” in an example of stunning historical amnesia (http://news.yahoo.com/syria-war-crimes-deepen-battle-territory-u-n-080613638.html). Human rights Watch also published a 68-page report showing the regime and Shabiha massacred around 250 people (167 in al-Bayda and 81 in Banyas, http://www.hrw.org/reports/2013/09/13/no-one-s-left-0). Of course, Tharappel might decide the entire HRW report was faked, because HRW would, in his opinion, be “biased” against his favourite tyranny, but in that case, he may have to be consistent and also dismiss HRW’s report several months later on the ISIS-led massacre of Alawite men, women and children in Latakia in August 2013.

Meanwhile, a UN report from 2013 listed 9 massacres, one carried out by rebel forces and eight by the regime (http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/09/11/un-report-on-syria-lists-at-least-eight-massacres-allegedly-perpetrated-by-the-assad-regime-and-one-by-the-rebels/). Here we can read about other large-scale regime massacres that Tharappel thinks didn’t happen, for example a massacre of 20-40 men, “blindfolded with their hands tied, shot at close quarters,” in Deir Baalbeh in Homs in April 2012.

Therefore, even if Tharappel is right that in the Tremesh massacre of 200 people in Hama, “the majority” of victims were “insurgents” rather than civilians, it is rather obvious that the list of large-scale massacres by the Shabiha regime is rather impressive anyway and fully backs my essential point in the article.

Even then, Tharappel’s own quote that the Battle of Tremseh was essentially “a lopsided fight between the army pursuing the opposition and activists and locals trying to defend the village” leaves plenty of room for ambiguity: of course, for supporters of bloody tyrants like Tharappel, “activists and locals trying to defend their village” are by definition armed “insurgents” that of course deserve to be mowed down; but this highlights the problems for those who support brutal counterinsurgency wars, not only in Syria but throughout the world: when people fight to defend their own villages against a bloody regime, the line between “civilian” and “guerrilla” is often unclear. The difference is that elsewhere in the world and in other conflicts, leftists instinctively know that, whereas Syria has created a whole oddball race of “left” reactionaries who place themselves on the other side.

Moreover, some of the massacres listed in the UN report just noted are not of such massive numbers as most being discussed here. For example, the UN investigators claim “six male farmers were executed when they approached troops to ask for access to their farms” in Al-Hamamiat, Hamah, on March 13, 2013; and, following the flight of most civilians, except the elderly, after heavy shelling of the Bab Amr neighbourhood in Homs, “on March 27, pro-government forces executed seven people of the Bzazi family. The dead were between the ages of 50 and 88 and included four women and three men.”

The point here is that, while much focus has been on the gigantic regime-shabiha massacres such as Houla, Bayda and Baniyas, too much focus on them (and people like Tharappel playing with “exposing” them), can overshadow the fact that the massacre of the Sunni population by the Shabiha regime was a far more widespread phenomenon from early 2012 onwards. Thus even though killings may be only of a dozen here and half a dozen there, not big enough to make Houla-style headlines, these small-scale massacres, village by village, slaughtering and burning, were ubiquitous across the length and breadth of Syria.

This 2012 report by Amnesty International (http://www.amnestyusa.org/research/reports/deadly-reprisals-deliberate-killings-and-other-abuses-by-syria-s-armed-forces) provides graphic information for anyone with the stomach, to understand that “repression” was not “only” a matter of machine gunning peaceful protestors in the chest, nor “only” of high tech aerial slaughter, but full-scale death squad sectarian terror. One small excerpt:

“Everywhere, residents described to Amnesty International repeated punitive raids by the state’s armed forces and militias, who swept into their town or village with dozens of tanks and armoured vehicles, in some cases backed up by combat helicopters, firing indiscriminately and targeting those trying to flee. At times, the army’s incursions came in the wake of attacks on government forces by armed opposition groups or clashes between the two sides. The outcome was the same in every case – a trail of death and destruction, much of it the result of deliberate and indiscriminate attacks.

“Everywhere, grieving families described to Amnesty International how their relatives had been taken away by soldiers and shot dead, often just a few metres from their front doors. In some cases, the bodies had then been set on fire in front of the terrified families. The mother quoted above had found her three sons burning outside her home. Another woman had found the remains of her 80-year-old husband among the ashes of her burned home after she was told by soldiers to look again for him in the house. Traumatized neighbours of a father of eight described how soldiers had dragged him to a nearby orchard, shot him in the legs and arm, shoved him into a small stone building, doused it with petrol and then set it alight, leaving the man to burn.”

Note the stress on burning – the extent to which victims have been burnt to death by Assadist death squads is truly shocking. When we consider how the ISIS burning of one Jordanian pilot (barbaric and horrific as it certainly was) got such huge international coverage, the idea that the western media is “biased against Assad” is shown to be as absurd as it always has been. More on the Syrian regime’s large-scale use of killing by fire: http://sn4hr.org/blog/2015/02/18/executions-burning.

Furthermore, as the war developed more into one using high tech slaughter, the towns and cities, or districts of cities, targeted for total demolition were also Sunni. As I quoted in my article from Syria expert Thomas Pierret:

“The problem is that many people do not even recognize the sectarian character of these atrocities, claiming that repression targets opponents from all sects, including Alawites. In fact ordinary repression does target opponents from all sects, but collective punishments (large-scale massacres, destruction of entire cities) are reserved for Sunnis” (http://angryarab.blogspot.com.au/2013/04/angry-arab-interviews-thomas-pierret-on.html).

While Pierret’s “destruction of entire cities” is usually thought of in terms of the Hiroshimas the regime has made of Homs, half of Aleppo, Damascus suburbs etc, it is important to note that destruction of whole towns and mass expulsion of whole populations also occurred in small towns (eg, al-Heffa in north-west Syria in June 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/15/world/middleeast/monitors-report-vast-devastation-in-syrian-village.html?_r=3&), pointing again to the likelihood that the phenomenon was much more widespread across great expanses of Syria than was newsworthy enough to be reported.

It is not difficult to see how all this led to the sectarianisation of the conflict. And as I write, an excellent article has appeared in the New York Review of Books by Jonathan Littell which describes the process of regime-driven sectarian slaughter turning an anti-sectarian uprising into a sectarian war in Homs (http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2015/mar/18/syrian-notebooks-what-happened-in-homs). Beginning with his arrival in Homs in January 2012, he reports “the people were still gathering daily to demonstrate—calling for the fall of the regime, loudly asserting their belief in democracy, in justice, and in a tolerant, open, multi-confessional society,” and notes that “The Free Syrian Army (FSA), made up mostly of army and secret services deserters disgusted by the repression, still believed its primary mission was defensive, to protect the opposition neighborhoods and the demonstrations from the regime snipers and the feared shabiha.”

However, he was able to document “the first deliberate sectarian massacre of the conflict, the murder with guns and knives of an entire Sunni family in the Nasihin neighborhood on the afternoon of January 26, 2012. Many more would follow, first of other families, then of entire Sunni communities in the village belt surrounding Homs to the West, in the foothills of the Jabal an-Nusayriyah, the so-called “Alawite mountain” from which the regime continues to draw its main support.”

He claims that “up to that point, as all our interlocutors kept repeating to us and as we witnessed in the demonstrations, the revolutionaries were doing everything in their power to prevent the descent into sectarian warfare,” and even with this massacre, the FSA response “was not to slaughter an Alawite family, but to attack the army checkpoints from which the murderers had come.” But by mid-2012 this was changing and Assad’s strategy was bearing fruit as “uncontrolled” rebel units were also carrying out sectarian massacres of Alawites.

But while creating this “uncontrolled” response was part of the strategy of “transforming a popular, broad-based, proletarian and peasant uprising into a sectarian civil war,” Littell claims the regime also wanted the real “terrorists and Islamic fanatics” that it labelled the opposition but which didn’t in fact exist; so, beyond the well-known release of jihadists in mid-2011, the regime “favoured the rise, throughout 2012, of the radical Islamist armed groups that would soon enter into conflict with the more secular FSA. When Da‘esh first began conquering territory in Syria, in January 2013, “they never fought the Damascus regime and only sought to extend their power over the territory freed by our units,” as an FSA fighter explained. “Before their arrival, we were bombed each day by the Syrian air force. After they took control of the region, the bombing immediately stopped.”

Role of “the Gulf”

All that said, my article did not say the Gulf has played a merely “peripheral” role in the promotion of sectarianism, as Tharappel “quotes” me; I argued it was secondary, and he knows that secondary does not mean peripheral. The introduction to my article raises the issue of “the sponsorship of parts of the resistance by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Gulf states, who are supposedly driven to divert the democratic struggle into a sectarian Sunni-Shia conflict in order that the democratic spirit of the Arab Spring does not reach their own tyrannical regimes” and says “this is certainly a factor.” However, my article did not aim to write about everything, but to balance this often “greatly exaggerated and misunderstood” factor. I give a fuller account of what I consider the role of the Gulf at https://mkaradjis.wordpress.com/2014/06/03/the-gulf-and-islamism-in-syria-myths-and-misconceptions/ .

In that article, I evaluate what I had previously written, that the Gulf was fomenting a mirror-image counterrevolution by promoting reactionary Islamist militias at the expense of the main opposition to the Assad regime, ie, the democratic secular FSA. My re-evaluation neither reduced the role reactionary Islamists, nor denied the dangerous level of sectarianism among the opposition, nor dropped the term mirror-image counterrevolution – I merely looked at facts and concluded that the Gulf states – especially Saudi Arabia – have played a smaller role than often assumed (though Qatar has played a significant role funding moderate Islamists), and the main role of the “Gulf” has been funding for anti-Saudi jihadist militias by the oppositionist big bourgeoisie in the Gulf, those who hate their own rulers as much as they hate the Assad regime:

“However, this side of the counterrevolution is led unambiguously by the formerly al-Qaida affiliated Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (ISIS), an organisation which is at war with all other parts of the resistance (secular, Islamist and even the more moderate al-Qaida affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra); which is widely suspected of being in cahoots with the regime; and which certainly has no connection with the Saudi and Gulf monarchies who rightly view al-Qaida as their mortal enemy.”

So all of Tharappel’s preaching about how bad the reactionary Sunni sectarian forces are is irrelevant; that is a given in my articles, but I simply demonstrate that the highest level of responsibility falls with the genocide-regime, a regime Tharappel fawns over.

Sunni sectarian militia

Tharappel is totally dishonest where he writes that “the leadership of the two most prominent insurgent fronts, namely ISIS and Jabhat Al Nusra, are openly sectarian.” As he well knows, no one in the Syrian opposition considers ISIS to be part of their struggle; all parts of the opposition, from secular through soft-Islamist and even harder Islamist consider ISIS an enemy alongside the regime, and most believe that the regime was in cahoots with ISIS until the US began bombing ISIS, at which point Assad sought to demonstrate his usefulness to the US “war on terror” by finally beginning to “bomb ISIS” (usually civilians in bakeries in Raqqa) in concert with the US.

In contrast, as my article pointed out, “the war currently (ie, January 2014) being launched against ISIS by the rest of the resistance” was “a very positive step in the direction” of the “relentless struggle against the influence of this destructive, reactionary sectarianism” which my article called for. As people who check know, this offensive by the FSA and allies drove ISIS out of Idlib, Aleppo, Hama, Homs, Latakia, Deir Ezzor and briefly even Raqqa, something never achieved by any other force against ISIS before or since.

Nusra is a different matter with a more complex relationship with the rest of the resistance, though of course he is right that it is “openly sectarian.” For my views on the contradictory nature of Nusra and the need for the FSA to struggle against it while not being sucked into the cynical US plans to have the FSA and Nusra kill each other for the benefit of the regime, see https://mkaradjis.wordpress.com/2014/11/08/as-nusra-plays-at-isis-lite-the-us-excels-as-assads-airforce/. However, he is wrong to claim only Nusra (let alone ISIS!) as the “most prominent” insurgent group.

Further, his implication that the rest of the rebellion and all “moderate” rebels can be represented by the views of the Jaysh Islam (JI) group, based in the bombed out Damascus slum Douma and led by sectarian nutter Zahran Alloush, is deeply cynical, aimed at fooling his readers who don’t have time to read up on the revolution.

One wouldn’t know for example that other member groups of the Islamic Front (of which Jaysh Islam is one member) are non- or anti-sectarian. For example, the main IF group in Aleppo, the moderate Liwa al-Tawhid, makes it its duty to protect local Christians against potential jihadist attack (http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2013/Sep-21/232025-christian-hostel-in-aleppo-has-own-view-of-jihadist-rebels.ashx#axzz2gfb4z1J2). Ahmed Issa, leader of Suquor al-Sham, the IF franchise in Idlib, declares he “welcomes an alliance with any movement or sect, including the Alawite sect, in order to achieve our goal which is to overthrow this regime” (https://www.academia.edu/5825228/Syrian_Jihadism). Even the original Islamic Front declaration, while full of plenty of questionable “Islamic law” kind of language, contained nothing specifically Sunni at all; and in any case, the Islamic Front is not all the Islamist militias in Syria, many of which (eg, Jaysh Mujahideen, which played a prominent role driving ISIS out of Aleppo, and the al-Ajnad Union in Damascus) are markedly more moderate than even the moderate parts of IF. Moreover, even the overly “Islamist” parts of the original IF declaration were effectively neutralised by the “Revolutionary Covenant” (signed in May 2014 by IF, Jaysh Mujahideen, al-Ajnad Union and other Islamist groups), which pledged support for human rights and the rule of law in a “multi-ethnic and multi-sectarian” Syria “without any sort of pressure or dictations” (http://justpaste.it/fi2u).

I don’t say all this because I want to play them up, or necessarily even trust all this – that is a question of balance of forces, the real views of the rank and file of these groups etc. However, we need to criticise what needs to be criticised, not paint everyone who is an “Islamist” with the same essentialist brush. Thus when we condemn someone like Alloush for his vile sectarianism we also need to recognise the anti-sectarianism among other Islamists, and give credit where due alongside condemnation where due.

Even in Alloush’s stronghold, the slums of Douma, context is hardly irrelevant to his sectarian rants. Reading Tharappel’s account one would not know that regime shelling killed 250 people in February alone, then on just one day, March 15, 83 were killed (http://eaworldview.com/2015/03/syria-daily-83-killed-on-sunday-as-regime-steps-up-bombardment-of-douma/, and this level of slaughter has been going on for years; or that the regime has imposed a long-term starvation blockade on Douma. The regime deliberately targets schools, medical units and marketplaces, and reportedly even uses vacuum bombs (http://www.vdc-sy.info/index.php/en/reports/1424225651#.VOVTYC6TWmX). As Gaza shows, reducing a slum to smashed up ruins, to Guernica, tends to strengthen “Islamist” forces or anyone who can offer either “radical” action, or God, as some kind of alternative when the entire world has abandoned you. Really, where a people are being literally smashed to pieces and starved to death by an Alawite-dominated military, we find anti-Alawi sectarianism? Why is this different to anti-Jewish views among many Palestinians?

In any case, it is not as if Alloush’s group is unchallenged in the Damascus region among the Islamist forces; in fact, in late 2013, Alloush’s megalomania (labelling his Islam Brigade the ‘Army of Islam’), his repressiveness (he is suspected of involvement in the kidnapping of the ‘Douma 4’ revolution activists) and his sectarianism led to open dissension from virtually all other Islamist groups in Damascus, with the Greater Damascus Operations Room set up by 12 major brigades excluding Jaysh Islam (http://carnegieendowment.org/syriaincrisis/?fa=53566&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=*Mideast%20Brief&utm_campaign=Mideast%20Brief%203-5-14; http://carnegieendowment.org/syriaincrisis/?fa=53432), and the moderate al-Ajnad al-Sham Islamic Union was formed in opposition to JI, initially claiming 15,000 fighters (http://carnegieendowment.org/syriaincrisis/?fa=54750&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=*Mideast%20Brief&utm_campaign=Mideast%20Brief%203-5-14), based on the traditionally more moderate Damascene Islam(http://carnegieendowment.org/syriaincrisis/?fa=54758).

Even JI’s rule in Douma itself has faced mass opposition from the revolutionary masses for corruption and profiteering – they demonstrate against both Alloush and Assad, with slogans like “who escapes from the regime army is killed by the tyranny of Islamic Front” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qmR97tklu0). Douma residents also attacked the storage units of merchants who dominate the local food distribution business to protest high prices, and they identified Jaysh Islam with these merchants (http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/11/syria-douma-protest-jaish-al-islam.html), in a particularly notable example of both the class nature of certain “Islamist” leaderships and of the kind of “uninterrupted” revolutionary struggle we can hope for if the regime is ejected.

And that is just among the Islamist forces; the 60,000 secular FSA fighters, especially in the magnificent Southern Front (http://rfsmediaoffice.com/en/the-free-syrian-army-southern-front-transitional-phase/; http://rfsmediaoffice.com/en/free-syrian-army-factions-of-the-southern-front-unite-their-forces-against-the-regime-and-extremists/) with its clear non-sectarian message, are completely absent in Tharappel’s account. My article even provided an example of an excellent non-sectarian appeal by the FSA in Latakia to the Alawite masses who were waging their own struggle against the regime at the time (http://darthnader.net/2012/10/13/and-then-there-was-hope/) as a contrast to the sectarian dynamic; Tharappel’s account of course ignores it.

Tharappel’s final point, that “even in cases of alleged crimes by state forces, every effort is made by the state to downplay or deny them as its considered shameful, where the “revolutionaries” not only commit sectarian atrocities, they brag about them openly,” is too absurd to comment on, and since he provides no evidence, it is hardly my problem to disprove what has only been asserted as an odd slander.

What is rather obvious, however, is that he contradicts himself here: he has accused the Syrian rebels of carrying their own slaughters of their Sunni base in Houla, Banias and Badiya, yet in these cases the rebels (like everybody else) blame the regime, rather than “bragging about them.”

And he accuses me of “mental gymnastics.”

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[1] Some other useful summaries of the structure of Alawite domination of the military-security apparatus: Alawi Control of the Syrian Military Key to Regimes Survival, http://www.refworld.org/docid/4e3fb2452.html; The Structure of Syria’s Repression: Will the Army Break with the Regime? http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/67823/ahed-al-hendi/the-structure-of-syrias-repression; Why Most Syrian Officers Remain Loyal to Assad,  http://english.dohainstitute.org/release/b8f4f88b-94d3-45a0-b78e-8adad3871daa

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• Note on Jay Tharappel. I have never met this person, and know nothing about him, except what I know from reading his constant apologetics for Baathist terror. But after I had already begun to write this response to his critique, I came across a strange facebook discussion. Tharappel had placed a meme, which he had presumably created, on a friend’s page, which used a photo of my face, from my facebook profile, with my name prominently written across it, and the out-of-context quote from an article of mine, that “much of the ranks of Nusra are decent revolutionaries.” Next to this he showed two pictures of Nusra pigs shooting women in the head for “adultery,” trying to associate my statement with these crimes. In my article he “quotes” from (https://mkaradjis.wordpress.com/2014/09/25/syrian-rebels-overwhelmingly-condemn-us-bombing-as-an-attack-on-revolution/), I wrote the following about Nusra, in the context of opposing the US imperialist bombing of Nusra on behalf of Tharappel’s genocide-regime, and of explaining the FSA’s condemnation of the US bombing: “Despite also being a sectarian organisation which the FSA will have to deal with in the future in its own time, based on its own decision-making, JaN (Nusra) has for the most part been fighting on the side of the FSA and the other rebels against both the Assad regime and ISIS … Despite the jihadist Nusra leadership, much of its ranks are decent revolutionaries, often former FSA cadre just going where the money and arms are.”

 Really, the fact that many rebels have joined Nusra’s ranks due to its superior (Gulf-supplied) wealth, while having no commitment to its ideology, is so well-known as to be cliché. I’m hardly the first to note this. The implication that it is these ranks who carry out then kinds of crimes depicted is grossly misleading, to put it politely.

In a further article (https://mkaradjis.wordpress.com/2014/11/08/as-nusra-plays-at-isis-lite-the-us-excels-as-assads-airforce/), explaining how this US bombing of Nusra politically strengthened it and thus facilitated its renewed attacks on the FSA from November 2014, I wrote “This has meant that many former FSA fighters, or fighters with little ideological commitment that would otherwise have been in the FSA, have joined JaN, without supporting its reactionary Sunni sectarian ideology.” I pointed out that this often moderated Nusra on the ground (ie, where such troops are present), and gave the example of Nusra’s brief liberation Raqqa from ISIS in January 2014, when they liberated two churches and removed the black jihadist flags that ISIS had put on their spires – because JaN in Raqqa was by then largely composed of FSA entryists.” I also explained that these FSA had since quit Nusra: “… the FSA’s Raqqa Revolutionaries Brigade, which spent some 8 months inside Raqqa JaN before re-emerging in April (it is now also fighting in Kobane alongside the YPG against ISIS).”

Further, I write that though Nusra had changed following its split from ISIS in mid-2013), “it remained an anti-democratic, Sunni-sectarian organisation at the level of leadership and ideology.” Then further explaining the implications of the new change in late 2014, and its renewed attacks on the FSA, I wrote that, regardless of compromises in practice Nusra had made with the FSA over the year (mid-2013-late 2014), it “stands openly for a clerical regime which is explicitly Sunni-sectarian … its explicit view that Alawites and Shiites can only be offered oppression under its rule can only strengthen the attachment of these minorities to the regime …”

I then noted that, while Nusra had not for the most part been acting like ISIS in terms of religious repression, “an arrogant JaN ruling unchallenged” may well begin to impose such repression, and noted that in Idlib, where Nusra had just waged war against the FSA (November 2014), a Nusra “Islamic court in Darkoush execut(ed) a man and woman through stoning (https://t.co/TlrKDkEZOt),” in other words, I referred to precisely the kind of “moral repression” as in the two “adultery” killings Tharappel tries to pin on me (they took place, also in Idlib, in January 2015), which I clearly condemn and connect to this new anti-FSA turn of Nusra.

Tharappel knows very well I support the struggle of the FSA against Nusra, and the various anti-Nusra demonstrations that have broken out among pro-revolution populations throughout Syria, especially in Idlib and Damascus. As I said, I know nothing about this guy, but he is clearly aware of my actual views, since he must have quite an unhealthy obsession with me to go to the trouble of putting together this slanderous meme and plastering it around the internet, someone who needs to get a life. I would prefer to simply reply to his views, but since he chooses to engage this obsessive slander, I hope readers take into account the ethics of this person when assessing his pro-fascist views

By Michael Karadjis

In recent months, Israeli occupation forces in Syria’s Golan Heights have launched a number of attacks on either Syrian regime or allied Hezbollah military forces in the region, adding to a more sporadic stream of attacks since mid-2013.

Given that countless Israeli politicians, military leaders, intelligence officials and other strategists and spokespeople have continually stressed, since the onset of the Syrian conflict, that they saw the maintenance of the regime of Bashar Assad as preferable to any of the alternatives on offer – as I have documented in great detail at https://mkaradjis.wordpress.com/2014/01/03/israel-and-the-syrian-war/ – the recent spate of Israeli attacks raises the question of whether Israel has changed its position and now favours the defeat of Assad.

Likewise, if for much of the war Israel has pointedly done nothing of even a limited nature that could have helped the Syrian rebellion – as Noam Chomsky has shown (http://lb.boell.org/web/113-1317.html) – the question raised after the recent (January 2015) Israel-Hezbollah clash in southern Syria, combined with the greater role being played by Hezbollah in the Syrian conflict in that region bordering the Golan, is whether Israel is likely to enter the war, even on a small-scale level, ostensibly on the side of the Syrian rebels to help them defeat Hezbollah.

Geopolitics and oppression

Before continuing, I want to first underline that I reject the “geo-political anti-imperialist” line of analysis which sees the actual people’s struggles, even great struggles, liberation movements and revolutions, as nothing but proxies of great powers who deserve one’s support, or otherwise, depending on which imperialist or capitalist powers are allegedly giving some support, for their own reasons. Support for the historic Palestinian movement for national liberation and return and for the momentous struggle of the Syrian people against a tyranny which has launched one of the most violent counterrevolutionary wars in recent history, should be fundamental starting points for anyone on the left who professes to be concerned with justice and to oppose oppression. Therefore, if this article discusses “geopolitics,” it is from the point of view of understanding the rationale for the often contradictory actions of powerful capitalist states (in this case mostly Israel) and does not at all concern the level of support for the revolutionary masses.

By the same token, the question of Israel does assume a special importance in relation to Syria, both due to it being an illegal occupier of Syrian territory in the Golan, and due to its role as the historic oppressor and dispossessor of the Palestinian people, creating a huge moral dilemma for Arabic peoples if they are forced up against the wall enough to accept Israeli support. In fact, for the most part, the mutual solidarity of the ordinary Syrian and Palestinian peoples has been rather prominent throughout this 4-year struggle, and the spontaneous support to Syrian people suffering regime terror by the Palestinian refugees in Yarmouk camp, who live cheek by jowl with poor Syrians in that region and are often extended family, and the resulting genocidal 2-year siege of Yarmouk by the regime, has been a high point of this (if a low point for many of the so-called Palestinian “leaders”). Two recent articles consisting of interviews with a number of Yarmouk Palestinians are excellent reading on this issue (https://syriafreedomforever.wordpress.com/2015/02/12/voices-of-yarmouk-syria-and-palestine-a-common-struggle/ and http://mondoweiss.net/2015/02/words-residents-yarmouk).

The argument

Here I will argue here that these pin-prick Israeli attacks have been essentially irrelevant to the Syrian war, but that does not necessarily mean that there have been no changes, which have resulted from changes within the conflict itself. I will also argue that it is extremely unlikely that Israel will change its policy, in any major way, of not intervening in the war, but like all analysts, I have no crystal ball. Rather, by examining what Israel’s interests are, I believe the policy of non-intervention (and at base, the continued opposition to any decisive victory of the Syrian revolution) follows logically; at the same time however, an examination of how far the changes on the ground have come will help us understand what Israel may be after if it did intervene in a more significant way.

Three main issues need to be examined in terms of what may have changed on the ground.

Firstly, the continuation of the war itself, and therefore of Assad’s actual long-term loss of control of important areas of his country, reduces what precisely was always Assad’s advantage to Israel, ie, the control that a ruthless dictatorship was able to exercise gave it the ability, for 40 years, to act as guard for the Israeli occupation of Golan. Will this force Israel to look for plans B and C?

Second, while Israel, like the imperialist world as a whole, wants to see the defeat the Syrian revolution, we may look at the question of whether the armed forces arising out of the revolution in the south, near the Israeli border, have been so weakened, have their backs to the wall so hard, that on the one hand they pose no real threat of revolutionary victory, while on the other Israel may be able to opportunistically use them, in their desperation, to turn them into something they never have been, a new “South Lebanon Army”, an Israeli puppet force to keep either Nusra, or Hezbollah, away from the border.

Finally, the growing importance of Iran and Hezbollah to the very survival of Assad’s regime, which some argue has reached the point of Iranian colonisation of the regime; Israel has a different view of Iran and Hezbollah to its view of the Assad regime itself. How far has this come and how decisively would that change Israel’s view of the war?
However, this final point raises the further issue of what really is behind Israel’s furious verbal obsession with Iran, something which I will argue is also not as straightforward as is often presented.

The Israeli attacks: What do they entail?

Let’s start with the recent Israeli attacks themselves: like earlier more occasional strikes, these have largely been pinprick operations, which fall into a number of categories.

First, in some cases, a Syrian rocket lands in the occupied Golan, almost certainly accidentally as a by-product of the war within Syria, and Israel ritually fires back, and it ends. Militarily irrelevant, this never involves military intervention against regime forces in actual battle with the rebellion, but is politically useful to both Zionist and Assad regimes (though I do not argue that this is a conspiracy to deliberately give Assad points; I generally don’t think decisions are made that way).

The second category of attacks, the overwhelming majority of attacks on Syrian military, both recently and around mid-2013, have been on warehouses or other bases involved in transporting Iranian rockets via Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Israeli attack on military warehouses and other installations at Damascus International Airport and the rural Damascus suburb of Dimas in early December 2014 fell into this category.

Israel has long insisted it would act to prevent long-range rockets getting to Hezbollah in Lebanon, where it has been in conflict with Hezbollah in the past; but by definition, such attacks are therefore irrelevant to the war in Syria, and until January 2015 Israel had not attacked Hezbollah in Syria. Indeed, by wasting its cadres, arms and resources in the war in Syria, Hezbollah is precisely much less of a problem to Israel than it allegedly was in the past, even in Lebanon itself.

Indeed, often after such attacks, Israeli leaders have gone out of their way to stress that the attack had no relation to policy in Syria; for example, in May 2013, following Israeli attacks on a warehouse with rockets destined for Hezbollah in Lebanon, Israel sought to persuade Assad that the air strikes “did not aim to weaken him in the face of a more than two-year-old rebellion”. According to veteran Israeli politician Tzachi Hanegbi, a confidant of Prime Minister Netanyahu, the government “aimed to avoid an increase in tension with Syria by making clear that if there is activity, it is only against Hezbollah, not against the Syrian regime” (http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/05/06/18079587-israel-to-syrias-assad-airstrikes-not-aimed-at-helping-rebels?lite).

One may claim he was being insincere. However, just why a roughneck regime like that of Netanyahu would feel the need to soft-talk to the Assad regime is anyone’s guess; in the circumstances, it seems best judged to be a frank statement of policy.

Likewise, after the December 2014 attack, Professor Eyal Zisser, an expert on Syria from the Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University, told The Jerusalem that “Israel’s policy is clear. It does not interfere in the war and has no interest to attack Bashar Assad and its army, or to topple the regime.” However “Israel took advantage several times in the past of Assad’s weakness and acted against arms shipments on their way from Syria to Hezbollah” (http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Israel-strikes-against-Syria-may-be-linked-to-Iranian-activity-383931).

Behind the targeted assassination of Hezbollah cadre in January

However, it is the third, and newest, kind of attack – namely Israel’s assassination of a number of prominent Hezbollah military leaders (and a prominent Iranian) inside the Syrian-held part of Golan in January 2015 – which raises most questions, especially when coming just after a spate of the other two types of attacks. Because in this case, it did not involve rockets going to Hezbollah in Lebanon, but rather, Hezbollah right there in Syria – where its only purpose is to bolster the Assad regime – was attacked.

Arguably, this does look more like an intervention against the Assadist/Hezbollah side of the Syrian war than any of the other attacks. And the fact that, for the first time, Hezbollah retaliated, and the two sides fired a few salvos at each other for a day or so, further strengthens this perception.

But while this may be indicative of a changing Israeli position (or a combination of a “searching” Israeli position and a division of Israeli opinions), a closer look at even this attack shows this is not that straightforward.

The attack itself was not on Hezbollah military units engaged in battle with Syrian rebels at the time. Militarily, it was again irrelevant. And while Hezbollah retaliating for once was big news, as expected the media scare about “impending war” blew over almost as soon as it began – once they’d each killed a couple of people, both sides made it clear they were satisfied and wanted to call it quits.

This is better called “shadow-boxing” or “political theatre” rather than fancy names like “impending war.”
But if militarily irrelevant, the reason the Israeli attack was a big deal was because some of the Hezbollah and Iranian officials were big names. In other words, it was a targeted assassination. It seems that Israel simply could not resist when its intelligence services found a bunch of them gathered in one spot within Israel’s range.

But still, why assassinate them?

Sure, it has great symbolic and bravado functions for the Zionist regime to hit people who are official public enemies. Yet the debate inside the Zionist regime and media was not by any means all supportive, perhaps surprisingly. The fact that Netanyahu is up for election in March led to plenty of criticism of the nature and timing of the attack as an election-driven stunt that put people in northern Israel in unnecessary danger (the same charges were made in relation to the December attacks: http://www.timesofisrael.com/minister-blasts-claim-syria-strike-was-electioneering/).

But while no doubt relevant, factors such as cheap elections stunts rarely tell the whole story of such issues. While militarily irrelevant at the point of contact, the attack does weaken – even if only slightly – the Iranian-Hezbollah intervention to bolster Assad, because these officials were high-level intelligence and military cadre important in directing their Syrian campaign. They were not gathered in the Golan to plan an attack on the Israeli occupation, but to plan their ongoing Syrian counterrevolutionary war. Once again, does this point in the direction of a changing Zionist position on the war?

One argument might be that they *were* in fact planning an attack on the Israeli-occupied Golan, despite their main role in Syria being otherwise. A more extreme rendition of this states that Hezbollah’s primary aim remains anti-Zionist and it is using its defence of Assad as a cover to open another front against Israel from Syria.

Actually, this was essentially Israel’s claim. Netanyahu’s response to the accusation that it attacked the group (not officially claimed by Israel) was to state that Israel would do anything to defend Israel from attack etc, implying that’s what the gathering was aimed at. Plenty of starry-eyed Hezbollah-lovers on social media have made the same claim, and noted that the previous week, Nasrallah had threatened to retaliate if Israel attacks it.

On both the Zionist and pro-Hezbollah sides, this assertion would appear to be baseless propaganda, in both cases for obvious reasons. In fact, if Nasrallah’s talk about “retaliating” was serious, this would require an Israeli attack to retaliate to; a threat to retaliate is not a threat to attack. By following up on Nasrallah’s words within a few days and launching such a provocative attack on such senior Hezbollah figures, it appears as if Netanyahu’s aim was precisely to get a Hezbollah retaliation.

But if the Hezbollah meeting was not aimed at attacking Israel, we come back to the question of whether the Israeli attack was connected to the war in Syria.

The aim of Israel’s attack: torpedo the nuclear talks

In my view, the main reason of the Israeli attack was neither about an imaginary Hezbollah intention to attack, nor was it about the war in Syria (even if it gets mixed up in this), and nor was it merely a pre-election gimmick, but rather an attempt to influence more region-wide issues.

The big issue for Israel has been the ongoing nuclear talks between Iran and the six big powers, above all the US-Iran negotiations and the growing US-Iranian alignment in the region. While pre-election timing may play its role, the more direct aim was almost certainly to put a bullet through the US-Iran nuclear talks, to torpedo any possible agreement, or at least to declare to the US that Israel was not on board.

Is Israel’s view on the Syrian war changing? Some evidence against

While this conclusion doesn’t prove that Israel isn’t also changing its view on the Syrian conflict in a more anti-Assad direction, nor is it that clear that it is. As throughout the war, Israeli leaders are playing along two separate tracks that are sometimes contradictory, an internal Syrian track where the preference has mostly been for Assad, and a more regional track where Assad’s ally Iran is declared the main enemy. And so the discussion within Israel about the relative importance of these two tracks in forming the overall policy framework leads to different Zionist views on the conflict.

There are very good reasons to doubt that Israeli leaders, on the whole, are changing position on the specifically Syria track. For one thing, just before the January attack on Hezbollah, various prominent Israel officials had made quite opposite comments.

For example, on January 14, Dan Halutz, former Chief of Staff of the Israeli Army, told Israeli radio that Assad was the least harmful choice in Syria, and that western countries powers “should put their own interests and those of Israel at the forefront of their priorities” and therefore “should strengthen the Syrian regime’s steadfastness in the face of its opponents.” If they allowed Assad to fall, “they would have committed the most egregious mistake” and this “would turn the region into a fertile ground for the jihadist groups with radical Islamic ideology, which will target Europe and Israel with their terrorist operations, in contrast to the Syrian regime which would never think of such steps if guaranteed to remain in power” (http://web.archive.org/web/20150404135807/http://aranews.net/2015/01/assad-least-harmful-israeli-official/).

The same article also quotes Israeli military analyst, Roni Daniel, who, while discussing the current military coordination between the Syrian regime and the US-led international coalition, claimed that “Israel has demanded the coalition to expand the list of targets to include all Sunni jihadist organizations stationed in Syria” – where the undefined category “Sunni jihadist” is vague enough to mean opening up a large part of the Syrian anti-Assad rebellion to US aerial attack (which in fact is not so different to what the US has in fact done).

Several days later, Brigadier General Itai Baron, the head of the Military Intelligence and Research Division of the Israeli Defense Forces (the second most senior position within Israel’s military intelligence establishment), said that “it is just a matter of time” before Syrian “Islamist” organisations, spearheaded by al-Nusra, “begin to target us from the Golan Plateau according to their radical ideology.” If they are not doing it yet it is only because they are busy confronting the Assad regime, but their ideology “clearly states that Damascus should be seized first and then they could proceed to liberating Jerusalem” (https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/articles/middle-east/16413-an-israeli-general-the-jihadists-will-set-the-golan-on-fire-against-us).

A few weeks earlier, in late December, the head of Israeli military intelligence, Major General Hertzi Halevi, told the Knesset that the threat of a clash between Israeli troops and militants on the Golan border was rising and could erupt any time, in parallel to the rising threat from jihadists in the Sinai in the south (http://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/politics/e7600499-fc09-4b0c-b2db-2b57f6c3f6fa). The article noted that “observers in Israel do not think Israel and Hezbollah are keen to resume hostilities,” quoting Amir Rapaport, a veteran military affairs reporter, that Israel was keen to reduce tension on its Lebanese border and had “ceased attacks against Hezbollah, leaving Hezballah no excuse to attack Israel” (a statement which sounds odd in light of events several weeks later). Another military affairs reporter, Yoav Limor, also noted that Hezballah’s involvement in Syria made it less likely to attack Israel.

The fact that this spate of pro-Assad, anti-Syrian rebel and even “peace with Hezbollah” statements was followed by Israel’s attack on Hezbollah in mid-January could well suggest a split among the Zionist establishment on the question of Syria, which in reality is much more likely than a general shift in the Zionist position.

But a closer look also suggests that the majority of the more pro-Assad views are expressed by military and intelligence officials, while the more vigorously anti-Iranian statements – which can get translated into minor military acts in Syria that are against pro-Assad forces – come from the political establishment and those most concerned with public propaganda (including in light of approaching elections).

This division was even played out during the scandal of Netanyahu going to address the US Congress to campaign against the US-Iran nuclear talks without going through Obama. A less prominent side-show to this was that Mossad appeared to have “gone rogue”. According to Bloomberg, “The Israeli intelligence agency Mossad has broken ranks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, telling U.S. officials and lawmakers that a new Iran sanctions bill in the U.S. Congress would tank the Iran nuclear negotiations … Evidence of the Israeli rift surfaced Wednesday when Secretary of State John Kerry said that an unnamed Israeli intelligence official had said the new sanctions bill would be “like throwing a grenade into the process.” But an initial warning from Israeli Mossad leaders was also delivered last week in Israel to a Congressional delegation — including Corker, Graham, McCain and fellow Republican John Barrasso; Democratic Senators Joe Donnelly and Tim Kaine; and independent Angus King — according to lawmakers who were present and staff members who were briefed on the exchange” (http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-01-22/netanyahu-mossad-split-divides-u-s-congress-on-iran-sanctions).

Finally, in terms of action, it is important to note that the sporadic pinprick Israeli strikes have not been the whole picture, just the part that creates headlines. Behind the scenes, it is important to note that Israel has pointedly given permission for Assad to carry out aerial slaughter in the supposedly demilitarised zone along the border, including throughout this very period (see fpr example http://www.dw.de/israel-cooperating-with-assad-in-golan-heights/a-17904892). Of course, as an illegal occupier, Israel should have no veto over the actions of anyone in Syria, but since demilitarisation of the border region was expressly part of the 1974 ceasefire agreement that mandates each side to ask permission of the other to carry out military operations there, it is certainly significant that permission has been continually granted.

Does Assad’s loss of control make him less useful to Israel?

Nevertheless, it is worth looking at changes that have taken place. It is notable that intelligence chief Itai Baron, cited above, also added that all the outcomes of the Syrian situation are expected to be negative, explaining that the Assad regime today is controlling no more than a limited area of territory within Syria (https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/articles/middle-east/16413-an-israeli-general-the-jihadists-will-set-the-golan-on-fire-against-us).

Let’s go back to the major reasons for Israeli preference for Assad: a powerful dictatorship was able to police the border with the Israeli-occupied Golan, making it the quietest of all “Israeli borders,” but Israel has no reason to trust either democratic-secular, Syrian nationalist, Islamist or jihadist forces in the opposition to maintain Assad’s slavish policy, and many reasons to expect the opposite. The same dictatorship regularly massacred Palestinian fighters, cadres and camps over the decades, whereas the natural alliance between Syrian people in revolt against the regime and their Palestinian neighbours and extended families in camps such as Yarmouk (under criminal starvation siege by the Assad regime for over a year) was not reassuring to the Zionist entity.

Thus, the loss of control by Assad has been continually cited as a major problem by Zionist officials who prefer Assad’s victory (my article cited at the beginning provides much evidence for this assertion). But there, of course, is precisely the problem: what has changed is that Assad has lost control of much of the border region, as well as large parts of Syria; Israel knows the regime cannot regain it easily. Certainly, as the regime tries, in vain, to regain lost ground, and the opposition fights back, but no one really wins, it is OK for Israel for the moment: as many have explained Israeli (and US) policy, both sides killing each other is not a bad situation.

Plans B and C?

However, it is also not a permanent preferable situation. If Israel decides that Assad is no longer capable of policing the border, it may need some plan B’s. While Israel has done nothing to boost the military strength of the Syrian rebels in the south and as shown above has allowed Assad to bomb in the demilitarised border zone, it is also sensible for Israel to search out potentially pliant rebel groups close to the border, by offering things such as hospital care for some wounded fighters, and some small non-lethal supplies. In one of history’s more sensationalist headlines, media reported that the UN observers in the Golan submitted to 15 members of Security Council a report on alleged contact between IDF officers and some armed Syrian fighters (http://www.dw.de/israel-cooperating-with-assad-in-golan-heights/a-17904892); the evidence presented was that the UN peacekeepers once saw an IDF guy handing over two boxes to some Syrian fighters, and that two apparently not-injured Syrian people entered Israel on October 27 . End of evidence.

The main reason for these small-scale contacts is not to boost the struggle against Assad, but rather to try to see if it can enlist some border units, when it becomes necessary, as Sawhat forces against al-Nusra in the region. According to a report in Haaretz, Israel has assisted villages near the border in exchange for keeping extremist Islamist groups away from the border (https://warsclerotic.wordpress.com/2014/12/21/israel-news-israeli-intervention-in-syria-looking-more-likely), though even this article slandered many FSA groups in the region as “sleeper cells” for ISIS and suggested Israel will need to get more involved in Syria to counter them. (Assertions that Israel has also aided Nusra, or coordinated with it, are of course just that – assertions, based, from what I can gather, on nothing at all).

All that said, is it possible that this may change, that at some point Israel may decide to throw its weight more decisively behind the southern wing of the FSA, to assist it against both Nusra but also against Hezbollah and hence pro-regime forces? It is a truism that there are no permanent friends or enemies in war; nevertheless, the issue is what would Israel or the southern FSA, get out of such an alliance.

For the FSA, the logic may seem simple; with the whole world betraying them, with their backs to the wall facing the regime waging unlimited war alongside thousands of Iranian, Iraqi, Lebanese and Afghan forces arrayed against them, desperation could meet Israeli opportunism; for Israel, if Assad can’t protect the border, maybe the FSA is “non-ideological” enough to be bought; and in any case, with “Syrian” army forces in the south now including large numbers from Hezbollah, Israel has a very different attitude towards them than towards the Syrian army itself. Could Israel thus use the FSA, in its desperation, and turn it into a new “South Lebanon Army”, an Israeli puppet force to keep either Nusra, or Hezbollah, away from the border?

Israel, of course, like the imperialist world as a whole, wants to see the defeat the Syrian revolution. But while the revolution has taken on armed struggle, revolution cannot be reduced to armed forces. If the revolutionary momentum has been lost and exhausted, and if the armed forces arising out of it in the south, near the Israeli border, have been so weakened, have their backs to the wall so hard, that they have no choice, then perhaps Israel could become their “saviour” and turn them into something they were not. And if so, then it makes sense to have allowed Assad to impose heavy defeats on the rebels precisely to make them more desperate and have less choice.
It therefore cannot be ruled out that Israel may opportunistically decide to intervene to try to turn the FSA into its creature by “helping” it against the current massive Assad-Hezbollah-Iran-Iraq offensive.

All this, however, is a lot of “ifs.” For the most part, the southern FSA is not, at this point, in such desperate straits. A massive army of 35,000 Free Syrian Army – Southern Front troops (consisting of 54 brigades) and several thousand Islamists have been holding out very well and advancing against the regime, with no help from Israel, and without ever showing any desire to cooperate with Israel. Compared to the north, the FSA has been doing well in this region. A strong, active, independent FSA is not what Israel needs.

The simple reality is that Israel will find hardly anyone among the rebel forces willing to become dupes for the Zionist occupiers of Golan. While some rebels with their backs to the wall may have pragmatically taken some arms offered by Israel (not that there is much evidence even for that), and while wounded troops have accepted hospitalisation in Israel, there is absolutely no evidence of any rebels on the ground or leaders in any of the internal or exile-based leaderships that have ever offered Israel the Golan – the only thing that would make them politically preferable to the Assad regime which has been so slavishly pliant on that issue. So while Assad’s loss of control makes him less useful to Israel, small-scale attempts to coopt opposition elements appears to be not much of an alternative.

What is possible, therefore, is a Plan C stashed away somewhere. If Assad is no longer capable of policing the border and no one else is willing, could Zionist leaders decide at some point to invade and seize a new “buffer zone” to “protect” the Golan Heights “buffer zone” that Israel originally stole to “protect” itself? If so, a massively provocative strike like the one in January, could have aimed precisely at getting a Hezbollah response which could act as the excuse to show that Israel needs to do this invading, occupying and “buffering.”

Since the whole thing ended almost before it began, however, it appears that if this was behind the attack, it may just be a warning of possible futures, rather than an immediate plan.

The growth of Iranian colonisation of the regime

There is also another important thing that has changed. While Iran and Hezbollah have been on Assad’s side since the outset, and Iranian (and Russian) arms and money have been key to the regime’s survival, it is only since around mid-2013 that their role became more decisive on the ground itself inside Syria. First was Hezbollah’s massive invasion in mid-2013 (the first large-scale foreign invasion in the war) to spearhead the regime’s siege, destruction, conquest and “cleansing” of the strategic Sunni town of Qusayr, near the Lebanese border. In itself, far from the Israeli-occupied southern border, this did not appear to bother Israel. But as the months went on, the mass influx of Hezbollah, Iraqi Shiite sectarian death squads and Iranian “Revolutionary” Guards, coordinated from Tehran, and the training of Alawite paramilitary formations, such as the NDF, by Iranian forces, while Syrian Sunni conscripts are kept in the barracks, has essentially led to what many see as the Iranian colonisation of the regime. Indeed many recent regime offensives appear to be little more than Hezbollah and Iranian offensives (http://eaworldview.com/2015/02/syria-daily-hezbollah-iran-now-leading-assads-forces/), and the execution of 13 Syrian soldiers, including officers, by Iranian Revolutionary Guards (http://syriadirect.org/main/37-videos/1853-iran-dominates-regime-leadership-in-daraa), during the current offensive against the FSA in the south, provides rather dramatic symbolism of this change (according to another report, Hezbollah officers also executed 19 Syrian troops last week near Sanamein in Daraa, for failing to “carry out orders” https://twitter.com/Malcolmite/status/568475938658365440).

As noted above, Israeli policy on Syria has followed two contradictory tracks, a pro-Assad internal Syrian policy and an anti-Iran regional policy: Israel has always seen Assad on one hand, and Iran-Hezbollah on the other, in a different light. While the quotes above show that many serious military and intelligence officials have not fundamentally changed their views, there is little doubt that the Iranian colonisation of the regime will have changed the views of some sections of the Zionist regime, or at least shifted them along the spectrum in a more anti-Assad direction. The recent spate of small-scale clashes may reflect this, while their limited and contained nature may also reflect both the division within the regime and the hesitation among those sections which have shifted.

There is also the interesting question of “balance.” It seems somewhat ironic that during the first two years of the war the US appeared to have a stronger anti-Assad view than Israel, as it balanced between its more anti-Assad allies in the Gulf on one side and the seemingly pro-Assad Israel in the other; yet precisely since the US began to firmly shift to a more pro-Assad view, from around September 2013 with the US-Russia-Assad chemical pact and then further on with the war on ISIS, Israel began moving, at least verbally, in the opposite direction. In part this is again related to Iran: the US-Russia-Assad dealing formed a twin-track with the reopening of US-Iran negotiations with Rouhani coming to power.

But even more pragmatically, as the US is now dealing with ISIS and the “Sunni” side of Israel’s “enemies” in Syria, Israel may consider that it has less to worry about from them and so can concentrate on the strengthened pro-Iranian “enemy” forces in Syria.

Nevertheless, even if true – and my view is that it is only partially so – this still does not answer all questions. It may seem self-evident that Israel would be anti-Iran and thus shift position on Syria as Iranian influence grew there. But unless one has some great illusions in the “anti-imperialist” and “anti-Zionist” bombast of Iran’s conservative capitalist ruling class, then it is not self-evident at all. Is Iran actually a “threat” – whether military or political, reactionary or “revolutionary,” to Israel? Why would it be?

Why the Zionist bombast about Iran?

Netanyahu recently lashed out at the US and the other five powers negotiating with Iran on its nuclear program, asserting that “major powers and Iran are galloping toward an agreement that will endanger the existence of Israel” (http://eaworldview.com/2015/02/israel-feature-netanyahu-us-europe-galloping-towards-iran-nuclear-deal-endangering-existence).

What a load of rubbish.

Certainly, many Arabs – especially Syrians and Iraqis! – would rightly consider the Iranian regime a deadly threat to their health and safety on an everyday basis, but this is clearly not an Israeli concern. However, the world is short of serious analysis of the Israeli stance. I mean, unless one really thinks Iran is about to develop a nuclear weapon – which is not as clear as is made out – or even if it did, that its one or two bombs would threaten the Zionist regime with its 300 nuclear warheads and advanced delivery systems – which I think is mad – then the entire Israeli pose needs analysis.

Why do Israeli leaders scream blue that they are under nuclear (or any) threat from Iran when clearly they are not? Above all, why would they be screaming that the US – ie, the very life-support for the Israeli apartheid entity as it violates every international law and human rights convention on a daily basis – is preparing a nuclear deal with Iran that would facilitate an Iranian nuclear threat to Israel? The idea makes little sense.

Some might claim that while Israel does not “fear” Iran, its furious language reflects Israel’s role as chief imperialist asset in the region, keeping war drums alive against Iran due to its “anti-imperialist” role in the region. There is of course one major hole in this argument that the western conspiracist and “anti-imperialist” left is silent on – it doesn’t sit well with the fact that US imperialism is essentially aligned to Iran across the vast expanse of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and now even Yemen; that Israel protests precisely this alignment; and that the point of this latest Netanyahu mouthful – and I would argue the point of the assassination of leading Hezbollah cadres in southern Syria in January – was precisely to try to prevent the nuclear deal between the world’s leading imperialist power and an imaginary “anti-imperialist” Iran. So much for that silly old argument.

Why then does Israel oppose the current US and EU imperialist attempt to bring Iranian capitalism – a powerful regional capitalism with ultimately the same interest in capitalist restabilisation of the region as any other local capitalist class – back into the fold of the imperialist-led regional capitalist order? Because of the threat of Iranian bombast? But this is circular: Iran’s bombast is largely a product of being locked out of the imperialist-led regional order for many years, a form of pressure to be brought back in to its “rightful” place.

True, the initial reason for being locked out was as punishment for the Iranian revolution that overthrew a US-backed tyrant and sent shock waves through the region, but the new capitalist ruling class, using reactionary “Islamist” ideology and death squads crushed the genuinely revolutionary masses in rivers of blood within a few years. Since then, European imperialism has for the most part long ago actively re-engaged with Iran, but the lock-out by the dominant US arms-oil-dollar power in the region has continued largely as a US favour to the Gulf monarchies and powerful Gulf bourgeoisies who gained in stature as imperialist props when their powerful rival the Shah of Iran fell.

Therefore, it is not hard to see why Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies are nervous about the current US-Iranian engagement. Gulf and Iranian capital (and Turkish capital) are direct regional rivals as “sub-imperialist” capitalisms, and so they now see fully reintegrating Iran as rivalry to their own enhanced status that will require some shuffling of the deck chairs. As they see it, Iranian domination or heavy influence in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, and US alignment with this in the interests of regional counterrevolution, has shifted things too far.

Israel, however, is not a “rival” of Iran (nor of the Gulf states). Israel as a colonial-settler state and mini-imperialist power is in the unusual position of being the absolutely dominant economic power of the region yet not being able to directly “rival” neighbouring capitalist classes in the region itself (high-tech Israeli capitalism is spread far and wide throughout the rest of the 3rd world instead): unless Israel were ever to allow a just peace settlement with the Palestinians – something which essentially defies the very nature of Zionism – then Israeli trade and investment in the region is absolutely minimal and in most parts non-existent.

Frankly, the Zionist project would be more threatened by the re-emergence of the Saudi peace plan of 2003, which gained the support of both Fatah and Hamas and every Arab state (except for Gaddafi’s Libya), than it is by a whole lot of bombast coming from distant Iran.

It is no accident that loud, rhetorically “rejectionist” voices have tended to come from regimes geographically distant enough to not have to do anything about it (Iran, Gaddafi’s Libya, Saddam’s Iraq) whereas the frontline states (Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon) have never harboured such a stance since the end of Nasserism.

Even Iran’s actual bothersome activities – the fact that it does manage to smuggle a handful of rockets to Hamas from a safe distance – are essentially carried out as one front in its pressure to be brought back into the imperialist-led system: pressure both on the US, and on the Saudi and Gulf rulers in the form of competition for regional “leadership.” We could expect a conservative capitalist ruling class to rein in such activity, as well as its bombast, if US imperialism successfully brought it back into the fold where it belongs; there seems little reason to believe, going on past record, that the US aims to make a deal with Iran to facilitate its arming of Hamas.

While Hamas is right to get arms from whoever it can (and had enough principles to break with Iran’s ally, the Assad regime, and identify with the revolution despite Iranian displeasure), these arms have not been decisive in the survival of Palestinian resistance, even militarily, and are hardly an “existential” threat to Israel let alone having any connection to the Iranian nuclear issue. While any arms are to be welcomed, for Iran they represent a minor sideshow, some political advertising, in comparison with its massive and decisive intervention as the vanguard of Syrian counterrevolution.

Is it because Israel “fears” Hezbollah?

OK, but some might say that Israel fears not Iran as such, but its proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon. Sure, Hezbollah is closer to home, and Israel has been in actual armed conflict with Hezbollah, unlike with Iran. So a strong Iran means a strong Hezbollah.

But does Israel really “fear” Hezbollah? No doubt Israel doesn’t like Hezbollah. After all, Hezbollah, back in the days when it actually was a resistance organisation (as opposed to a hired sectarian death squad for the Syrian Caligula regime), drove the Zionist occupation out of southern Lebanon in 2000. So Israel doesn’t like being humiliated in this way and no doubt holds a deep grudge. We cannot underestimate symbolic issues.

But while symbolism is important to explain an attitude, it would not explain that Israel actually “fears” an Iran-armed Hezbollah unless Israel plans to re-occupy southern Lebanon, which as far as I am aware is not the case.

And of course Israel was again defeated by Hezbollah when it made the foolish decision to try to invade Lebanon in 2006, giving Hezbollah true hero status in the Arab world with the battle of Bint Jbeil. But that invasion wasn’t aimed at reoccupying Lebanon. Hezbollah had kidnapped and killed some Israeli troops near the border of the occupied Shebaa Farms area. Israel “responded” by laying waste to the whole of Lebanon, causing epic destruction and killing some 1300 Lebanese people and displacing a million, in the usual savage Zionist fashion. It is true that the Farms are a small piece of Lebanon that Israel did not withdraw from. However, being only 22 square kilometres in size, it is now very difficult to justify, to the Lebanese people, border attacks to liberate it if the cost imposed by Israel is going to be of that magnitude.

In fact, Hezbollah leader Nasrallah himself made this point, stating after the war that “If there was even a 1 percent chance that the July 11 capturing operation would have led to a war like the one that happened, would you have done it? I would say no, absolutely not, for humanitarian, moral, social, security, military, and political reasons.” So therefore Hezbollah is unlikely to repeat such actions.

It is true that Hezbollah showed it had rockets that could hit deep into Israel, and so Israel could not get away with its mass murder scot-free. This was certainly a good thing. But despite Zionist and western media propaganda, there was simply no comparison between the massive death and destruction rained down on Lebanon by Israel and the largely psychological damage to Israel done by a bunch of Hezbollah rockets.

In other words, it would have been a pyrrhic victory at best for Hezbollah to say, “OK, we killed a couple of troops on the border, Israel destroyed the whole of Lebanon, but we got a few shots at them in Haifa too.” No, it was Israel’s megalomaniacal decision to invade to further punish Hezbollah that resulted in a defeat on the ground that revived Hezbollah’s hero status.

But again – that only means that Israel “fears” Hezbollah if it once again intends to invade Lebanon, which would seem unlikely. Even if Israel was to carry out a similarly enormous aerial “punishment,” and thus “fear” a small number of retaliatory rockets, this would only occur if Hezbollah again launched a border provocation. The argument is thus entirely circular.

Is Hezbollah interested in such conflict? Basically, the 2006 heroics have outlived their time. Hezbollah’s border with Israel has been stone-cold quiet ever since 2006 – some nine years now – perhaps not as quiet as the Assadist Syrian border with the Israeli-occupied Golan, but pretty quiet. Moreover, even as Hezbollah, under Iranian orders, plunged itself in to waste its resources, arms and cadres killing Syrian people on behalf of their murderous tormenter, Nasrallah explicitly promised Israel, via Russian minister Mikhail Bogdanov, a continuation of the quiet border:

“You can tell the Israelis that Lebanon’s southern borders are the safest place in the world because all of our attention is focused on what is happening in Syria,” said Nasrallah, confirming that Hezbollah “does not harbor any intention of taking any action against Israel,” according to Bogdanov (http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/1.580751).

Indeed, if Hezbollah’s alleged “anti-imperialist” and “anti-Zionist” stance was still to have any meaning, beyond jargon to cover its increasing degeneration into an Assadist death squad, then surely the time to have sent a few rockets, or kidnapped a few Zionists, might have been to give a little solidarity to the Palestinians during the latest Zionist round of burning Gaza to the ground in summer 2014. Any chance of that? None. It seems Hezbollah was far too busy killing Syrians.

Even as Hezbollah now expands more into southern Syria, the idea that it will use this base to confront Israel – ie to do what it has not done from Lebanon for nine years – would need some evidence. The fact that it has been Israel which has provoked Hezbollah a number of times, yet Hezbollah never even responded until the latest, most provocative Israeli attack, suggests this has remained far from Hezbollah’s aim.

If Hezbollah hadn’t responded after such a provocation, its alleged “resistance” credentials may have gone from out the window, where they currently are, into the woods, lost forever. As a friend, Mahmoud, a Yarmouk Palestinian refugee in Sydney, recently explained, few organisations or leaders have ever seen their star fall as far as have Hezbollah and Nasrallah the last four years. From the heights of stardom, among Shiite and Sunni alike, for the 2006 confrontation with Israel, to being widely hated throughout the region for being a participant in the new Nakbah of millions of Syrian (and Palestinian) Sunni, Hezbollah really needed something to give it some fresh “resistance” credentials. Perhaps Israel’s provocation came at a good time – a couple of days of shadow-boxing not only aided the political front at home for Netanyahu but also allowed Hezbollah to dust off a few old ‘resistance” stripes and fool a few gullible western leftists.

And if nothing more comes of it, it may turn out that this clash was useful theatre to allow the Assad regime claim to be fighting the Zionist occupier of Golan as it advances, alongside its international Shiite sectarian brigades, against the FSA in the south (this appears to be what Interim Defense Minister of the Syrian Opposition Coalition and former FSA chief, Salim Idriss, is suggesting here: http://en.etilaf.org/all-news/local-news/idris-syria-is-coming-under-full-scale-iranian-invasion.html).

But if all this is so, if Hezbollah is not interested in confrontation with Israel, then why has Israel acted provocatively to Hezbollah? And if Hezbollah is not really the problem, it still brings us back to what the big deal is with Iran.

The manufactured Iranian “threat” – an essential device for Zionist ideology

What then is the great “Iranian threat” to Israel? I apologise if my explanation doesn’t dress up the Iran “revolution” regime enough or doesn’t seem based in any real concrete “threats” or anti-imperialist actions, which simply do not exist. In my view, it is an entirely manufactured threat, but the need for such a major “threat” to exist is crucial to the ideological foundations of the late Zionist state.

Israel felt so unthreatened by Iran during Iran’s much more “revolutionary” era of the 1980s, just fresh from the revolution and with the firebrand Khomeini still in power, that it armed Iran in its war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and openly advocated Iranian victory, as is extremely well-documented. But following the US destruction of Iraq in 1991, Israel began to vocally declare Iran to be its worst enemy.

According to the article ‘The Forever Threat: The Imminent Attack on Iran That Will Never Happen’ (http://www.wideasleepinamerica.com/2014/08/forever-threat-imminent-attack-iran-headlines.html), Israel has been making noises about launching an imminent attack on Iran, often “within weeks,” ever since 1994.

For example, on December 9, 1997, “a The Times of London headline screamed, “Israel steps up plans for air attacks on Iran.” The article, written by Christopher Walker, reported on the myriad “options” Israel had in confronting what it deemed “Iran’s Russian-backed missile and nuclear weapon programme.””

The article is very well worth a look, because it shows dozens of headlines from the past quarter century about Israel being ready to attack Iran any day now.

When an Israeli attack on Iran is not just generally a possibility but is “imminent” in 1994, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2009, 2012 and 2015, we start to get what the title of the article means, “the imminent threat that will never happen.”

It will never happen because there is no Iranian threat to Israel. The article claims, and gives much evidence, that Iran is not making a bomb. But even if it were, its one or two bombs may well pose a threat to other Arabs but would be no threat to a nuclear power like Israel with its hundreds of nuclear bombs and state of the art delivery systems.

Which leads to the obvious conclusion that this continually repeated “imminent” threat to attack Iran, the permanent call on Israelis and the whole region to be on tenterhooks expecting Armageddon to arrive at any time, the permanency of a state of advanced paranoia, xenophobia and existential “threat” to Israel and the Jews, may be the purpose of these declarations of a coming attack on Iran: Israel may never attack, but the daily threats that it is always around the corner are their own goal.

For many years now, Zionist ideology has been in crisis. The success of the Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement; the growing questioning of Israel’s savage treatment of the Palestinians; the obvious contradiction between being a “Jewish state” and democracy; support around the world for Palestinian statehood; are all manifestations of this.

But if Israel and “the Jews” are under alleged existential threat, then Israel and its allies have something with which to homogenise Israeli and Jewish opinion about the need for a Jewish homeland. As the alleged “threat” of another Final Solution coming from the oppressed and terrorised Palestinian “terrorists” looks more and more ridiculous to most rational people, what can rescue this charade better than a powerful regional state, with a regime that itself relies heavily on bloated “anti-Zionist” rhetoric, developing a nuclear bomb with which to allegedly wipe out Israel? Israel had found itself the necessary “new Hitler.”

The Iranian regime of Ahmedinejad was particularly adept at pushing rhetoric to the limits (like Israel, to bolster Iran’s own theocratic project) and playing right into the hands of Likudnik hawks and neo-con nutjobs. While it is true that his statement that Israel will “disappear from the hand of time” was deliberately mistranslated by Zionist and imperialist hacks to Israel will “be wiped off the face of the Earth,” this mistranslation was made more believable by other Ahmedinejad moves and noises, such as his hosting of a Holocaust-denial conference to which even American KKK types were invited.

So when a Holocaust-denying leader who has allegedly called for Israel to be eviscerated is allegedly developing nuclear weapons, this is a Godsend to Israel that it can scarcely avoid making full use of. Netanyahu’s claim that the US is allowing Iran to develop a bomb as an existential threat to Israel is little more than Netanyahu utilising the rhetorical device that is existentially crucial to Zionist ideology.

In that sense, Netanyahu is not wrong that US-Iranian nuclear negotiations, and above all the possibility of a deal, is an existential threat to Israel, but in a very different way to what he claims. If US imperialism’s need to bring Iranian capitalism more fully back into the world capitalist system with its “rightful” place in the region leads to a deal that allows Iran to peacefully develop nuclear energy, then 25 years of Zionist bluster is out the window and finding a new “threat” of that magnitude and importance will not be an easy task, let alone explaining that the entire time it was all a charade.

Indeed, if this is correct that the extreme Israeli reaction to the “threat” of the nuclear talks has a largely political purpose, then it is perhaps no surprise that some of same military-intelligence bloc that, as shown above, tended to be more pro-Assad, are also often less guided by rhetoric when it comes to Iran. For example, as noted above, Brigadier General Itai Baron, head of the Military Intelligence and Research Division of the Israeli Defense Forces, expressed more concern with the “danger” coming from Syrian opposition than the regime side; but he also appears more level-headed on the question of Iran.

So, when in November 2013 Iran signed a Joint Plan of Action with six world powers in Geneva, Netanyahu called this a “historic mistake”, which enabled “the most dangerous regime in the world” to get closer to “attaining the most dangerous weapon in the world;” whereas “Israel’s senior intelligence analyst, Brigadier-General Itai Brun, told a conference near Tel Aviv that Iran has so far abided by the interim agreement and added that he was cautiously optimistic about the future of the negotiations between Iran and the P5+1,” that he believed Iran appeared genuinely interested in an agreement to end its nuclear program (http://intelnews.org/tag/itai-brun/). The alleged defection of Mossad during Netanyahu’s recent stunt with the US Congress, explained above, also makes sense in this framework.

By Michael Karadjis

In a recent interview in Paris-Match, Bashar al-Assad was asked whether coalition airstrikes were helping him, to which he replied that …

“there haven’t been any tangible results in the two months of strikes led by the coalition. It isn’t true that the strikes are helpful. They would of course have helped had they been serious and efficient.”

(http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2014/12/03/assad_airstrikes_aren_t_helping_me_hollande_you_re_as_popular_as_isis)

Assad’s call on the US to bomb his country more seriously and efficiently comes from someone who knows how that’s done. The following account of the US-Assadist bomb-Raqqa two-step dance over the last week or so shows who really knows how to kill all those Sunni wretched of the Earth “efficiently”:

– On Sunday 23 November, US warplanes carried out two strikes against an ISIS-occupied building in the city of Raqqa in north-eastern Syria. No civilian casualties were reported.

– On Tuesday 25 November, Assad’s air force carried out ten air attacks on Raqqa, reportedly killing as many as 209 people, most if not all civilians. Targets were reported to include a busy marketplace, a bus depot, and a mosque where dozens of people were gathered for prayers.

– On Thursday 27 November, Assad’s air force carried out between seven and ten further attacks, including one at the city’s National Hospital, reportedly killing at least seven more people.

– On Friday 28 November, Assad’s air force carried out three attacks in Raqqa, killing at least five people including three children.

– On Saturday 29 November, Assad’s air force again attacked Raqqa’s National Hospital. LCC Syria named five people killed.

– In the evening of Saturday 29 November, US-led coalition aircraft were reported to have carried out at least 15 airstrikes. Later reports said the total had exceeded 30 airstrikes. The activist group Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently reported that all the targets of the US-led coalition were ISIS bases, hitting a high number of ISIS fighters.

The following are press reports of casualties from Tuesday’s attacks in Raqqa. Numbers given for people killed rose over time. No press reports gave precise numbers for people maimed and injured.

• Activists: Syrian strikes kill 60 in IS-held city, Associated Press, 25 November. Cites initial counts of number killed – SOHR: over 60, LCC: at least 70, Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently: over 80 killed.
• Syria conflict: Raqqa air strikes death toll rises, BBC News, updated 26 November. Cites LCC as documenting 87 deaths and warning of more injured likely to die due to lack of medical facilities. Cites SOHR saying at least 95 killed, of whom at least 52 have been confirmed as civilians.
• ‘Scores dead’ in air strikes on Syria’s Raqaa, Al Jazeera, updated 26 November. Updated to cite activists as saying 135 people were killed.
• By Friday 28 November, the activist group Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently said they had documented 209 people killed in Tuesday’s air attacks.

Full:

http://leftfootforward.org/2014/12/raqqa-to-appease-iran-obama-gives-assads-air-force-a-free-pass-for-slaughter/

Following Assad’s grisly massacre of 209 people on November 25 (this high figure has been confirmed), the official US State Department twitter site tweeted:  Government in #Syria has launched airstrikes designed to hit #ISIS in #Raqqa; civilians caught in the crossfire: https://twitter.com/StateCSO/status/537384003624787968

Analysis: Why are they bombing together?

Incidentally, I don’t agree with the article’s analysis of why the US and Assad are jointly bombing Raqqa at the same time with such ferocity. It reads:

“One reason is the fear, voiced to him by “a senior administration official” that any direct attack on Assad by the US would be met with retaliation by Iran’s militia proxies against US forces in Iraq.”

While I doubt that this is the main reason at all, even if this was the reason for not launching a “direct attack on Assad,” that is just a red herring. The question here is not why the US does not attack Assad, but why it actively collaborates, as for example in this bombing two-step over the dead bodies of hundreds of Raqqa civilians. It continues:

“The other reason is Obama’s desire to reach a nuclear agreement with Iran. According to leaked accounts, a recent letter from President Obama to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the nuclear negotiations included an assurance that the US didn’t intend to strike Assad’s forces in Syria.”

There is no doubt that this agreement was made and the “secret” letter is a fact. But while this may be an added incentive, it is in no way the essential reason.

The fundamental reason is that the US never had any intention or interest in trying to bring down the Assad regime, still less of intervening to do so; the US has intervened to help shore up capitalist class rule in Syria, which means the state and the regime (even if the US believes that Assad himself and his closest cronies should “step down” to help save the regime).

There is simply nothing remarkable about the fact that the US and Assad bomb the same targets; indeed, Assad didn’t bomb Raqqa or ISIS for a whole year (preferring to collaborate with ISIS against the revolutionary forces) and only began bombing ISIS when the US did, in order to demonstrate its usefulness to the US so-called “war on terror.” Meanwhile, the US bombs not only the barbaric ISIS, but also Jabhat al-Nusra and even the Islamic Front, more genuine opponents of the Assad regime than ISIS ever was.

The US and Assad, in a word, bomb Raqqa together not due to some mind-boggling coincidence or some conjunctural factor but because they are fundamentally on the same side.

In particular, Assad’s grisly massacre of the Raqqa civilian population demonstrates that the regime considers the impoverished, dispossessed Syrian Sunni population to be untermenschen; after treating their Iraqi cousins in the same way during its occupation of Iraq, the US is in familiar territory.

Confusion about the reasons for this is also expressed in other articles. For example, Edward Dark (http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/sharing-skies-assad-america-s-predicament-syria-1105355734) notes with some bewilderment:

“With American and Syrian warplanes both bombing Raqqa, residents of the Syrian city are wondering if the two are working together.”

Yeh? No shit, Sherlock. He continues:

“Last week I spoke to Manaf, a resident of the Syrian city of Raqqa currently controlled by the Islamic State. He made his frustration clear: “the politics don’t matter to the people here, all we see is one type of death – it comes from the sky, whether the Americans are dropping the bombs or Assad, it makes no difference. They are both murdering us.”

“He added: “What do you expect any sane person to think here? One day American airplanes and the next Bashar’s, how do they not crash or shoot each other? It is simple, they call each other and say today is my turn to kill the people of Raqqa, please don’t bother me, it will be yours tomorrow”.

“Manaf” seems to be smarter than the vast majority of western journalists and analysts on this question.

Dark also notes:

“The US, despite wading into the Syria conflict, appears to have given up on its former rebel allies, the Free Syrian Army (FSA) who have themselves been sidelined by the powerful Jabhet al-Nusra, al-Qaeda Syria branch.”

Calling the FSA America’s “allies”, even former, is of course just the usual use of Orwellian language to describe the US refusal for years to give anything other than radios, night goggles, tents and ready-meals to select groups of rebels, while stationing people in Turkey with the express aim of blocking any supply of manpads (shoulder-fired anti-aircraft guns), the only thing the FSA can use against Assad’s aerial genocide. After the FSA and its rebel allies launched a highly successful war on ISIS in January 2014, the US did begin providing some weapons to some select groups of rebels, but precisely for the purpose of fighting ISIS, not the regime, and encouraging them to attack Nusra as well. “Given up” on “former allies” should read “thrown under a bus those it previously pretended to half-support in order to co-opt.” The co-option failed. But anyway, he then explains:

“This has left America in a tight-spot; since it is unwilling or unable (due to public perception and internal politics) to work openly with the one strong military force fighting Nusra and Islamic State – the Syrian regime.”

Says Dark. No Edward, listen to Manaf, he is the one who knows what he is talking about.

“America’s alternative – training and equipping a new, carefully vetted, rebel army – will take at least a year.” Even the “vetting” has not begun for a mere 5000 alleged troops; the “training” (as if battle-hardened rebels who have been calling for manpads and quality arms for years need “training”) will begin, supposedly, sometime in 2015 and take 18 months, so maybe by late 2016 or early 2017 we might see these imaginary figures. Why any analyst would take that seriously when discussing a conflict that has reached such a decisive point right now is beyond me.

Dark goes on:

“So the US is stuck; each militant it kills strengthens Assad and lessens the power of the rebels fighting him.”

Stuck? Why do so many analysts continue to argue that everything the US has done with Syria over the last 4 years has simply been due to incoherence and getting it wrong? Perhaps that is the best result for the US?

“A conflict “freeze” seems to be what the U.S is seeking now, in an effort to halt ongoing advances by the regime into rebel-held territory around Aleppo. The regime is unlikely to agree to a ceasefire unless it can gain assurances of its own survival, in other words a reversal of the US’s “regime change” policy. This does not necessarily mean the continuation of Assad’s presidency, but the structural integrity of the regime he heads, the perseverance of its interests and networks of power. Such a deal, while difficult to negotiate, is not entirely out of the question.”

Which US “regime change” policy is this? It has never existed. Curiously, the policy Dark just described, of regime survival, of its structural integrity (while not necessarily including Assad’s individual presidency) has been US policy since late 2011; there is no need for the US to “reverse” any policy. For some reason, Dark imagines that he, not Obama, invented it.

He concludes:

“Some in Raqqa already believe a covert alliance between the US-led coalition and the Syrian regime – who have taken turns bombing their city – is in place. Denials by the US will not convince them otherwise.”

No, but apparently it can convince the bulk of western journalists and analysts, curiously enough.

How then do they explain that, right now, the US is also bombing ISIS as it advances on the regime-controlled airport of Deir-Ezzor, also in the north-east, in other words directly intervening to protect the regime? As admitted by the US embassy (https://twitter.com/hxhassan/status/541138358106193920). The significance of an airport to the regime is great. Deir Ezzor airport is distant from the bulk of regime-controlled territory in the south-west; and ISIS controls the rest of Deir-Ezzor (since conquering it from the FSA and rebel allies in July, with the *direct* collaboration, at that time, of the regime!).

However, while ISIS has no planes, the regime has hundreds and massacres Syrian children in enormous numbers with them. If ISIS seizes the airport, it would gain no warplanes, and the territorial gain, since it already controls the region, would be minimal. On the other hand, the regime would lose an airport which it uses for its daily aerial genocide. That is what the US is directly bombing to protect in Deir-Ezzor.

And it is simply no miracle, blunder or conspiracy; the US is opposed to the overthrow of a regime which is the concentrated expression of the Syrian mega-capitalist plutocracy, whether by jihadists like ISIS or, even more, by democratic revolution

By Michael Karadjis

Summary

§ The defeat of and expulsion from much of Idlib province of the Syrian Revolutionaries Front (SRF), a component of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), by Jabhat al-Nusra (JaN) has led to vastly different responses among supporters of the Syrian revolution. This article will argue that it is an important setback for the Syrian revolution, though how significant remains to be seen as facts are unclouded.

§ Meanwhile, the subsequent US bombing of JaN in regions of northern Idlib not affected by the fighting, and the extension of US bombing to Ahrar al-Sham, a component of the Islamic Front (IF), which had opposed the in-fighting and had tried to separate the sides, further indicates the reactionary nature of the US intervention (indeed, as I will argue below, the US bombing was part of the background to JaN’s aggressive moves), while also highlighting again the long-term US strategy of trying to incite civil war within the ranks of the anti-Assad forces to bring about mutual suicide. However, the US push has been attempting to cajole the FSA into launching such a war, a push that has been entirely unsuccessful, whereas instead it is JaN that is, unwittingly, carrying out this strategy.

§ Meanwhile, this open US attack on non-ISIS and even non-JaN forces, along with the fact that regime warplanes have been attacking rebel positions in Idlib (eg Binnish) at the same time that US warplanes bombed northern Idib towns, only further underlines the fact that the US has intervened in Syria on the side of the Assad genocide-regime and against the revolution, as the latter coordinates with the US and steps up its own war on its people to simply incredible heights.

So what actually happened?

Regarding the specifics, it appears that a group of SRF cadre in the Idlib town al-Bara defected to Ahrar al-Sham (a nation-wide Salafist network which is the component of the Islamic Front (IF) considered closest to JaN). The SRF attempted to arrest them in order to make them return their weapons (which, as I understand, is the practice according to the local “sharia court”), and in response, JaN cadre present at the time attacked the SRF.

By and large, this course of events is the same described by JaN accounts, such as this widely spread version by a JaN cadre (http://justpaste.it/hr1m) and the JaN site http://eldorar.com/node/62246. The main differences are in emphasis, over who was more violent at the time and so on.

However, whatever the specifics of the incident in al-Bara, and whether or not the SRF were overzealous or violent in their initial skirmish, this cannot explain JaN’s further response, attacking the SRF right across Idlib with tanks and heavy weapons, attacking the village of SRF leader Jamal Maarouf, killing his body guards, his nephew and other leading SRF cadre (eg, commander Muhammad Ali Alloush, who had joined the revolution from the beginning), expelling the SRF from its stronghold in the Jabal al-Zawiya region, attacking other FSA units and trying to drive them out of Idlib.

Nor does it explain the fact that Ahrar al-Sham (AaS) itself, despite being the alleged victim of an overzealous SRF, did not attack the SRF, in fact it issued several statements calling for both sides to end the fighting (eg, https://twitter.com/charliewinter/status/527866467552071680). In one statement, Ahrar al-Sham “Shar’i” (religious leader) asks JaN “who are you to decide to terminate the presence of someone?” (https://twitter.com/MosaM94/status/530221698851688448).

According to the Lebanese Daily Star newspaper, a video statement by AaS commander Abu Bakr “argued that extremism wasn’t limited to ISIS, he criticized the Nusra Front for waging war against FSA groups for not being sufficiently religious,” while adding that FSA groups “were also guilty of “corrupt” behaviour,” including extorting money and “blasphemy,” so “both sides need to “purify” their ranks,” the Star quotes him as saying (http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2014/Nov-01/276158-syria-rebels-deploy-peacekeepers-in-idlib.ashx#ixzz3I39Ul6iz).

Likewise, Idlib’s local IF franchise, Suqour al-Sham, also officially stated it has no role in the hostilities, rejecting opposing assertions that it had either helped Maarouf escape or had arrested SRF men and handed them to JaN (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B1ICD8MCYAElEDH.jpg).

Harakat Hazm, a large secularist FSA group in the region, also called for both sides to stop and claimed that it tried to mediate, but JaN rejected its arbitration (http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sdloe4). Hazm then apparently refused to allow a JaN war party to cross a check-point as it was on the hunt for SRF cadre (a version of events also backed by JaN accounts), so JaN attacked Hazm as well, forcing it to retreat from its strongholds in Khan al-Sobol and Khan Batekh. JaN also arrested Hazm commander Mohammad Ghazi.

All the other organisations in Idlib also called for an end to the fighting. An agreement was made between 15 battalions in Idlib on October 31 to send “peace-keeping brigades” to separate fighting battalions. Carrying white flags they fanned out across the province and demanded both sides pull back to separate, nearby villages (http://syriahr.com/en/2014/10/an-agreement-between-15-islamic-battalions-in-idlib-to-form-forces-to-separate-between-the-fighting-battalions/). However, JaN prevented them entering al-Bara and refused to accept any arbitration.

Meanwhile, a group of religious scholars and students launched an initiative on social media and Arabic-language news sites called “Don’t Fight,” calling for the immediate cessation of combat and a mutual release of prisoners (https://www.facebook.com/idleep.m.a/posts/372489032905775), while the Friday demonstrations that week were held under the slogan of “United we stand, divided we fall” (http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2014/Nov-01/276158-syria-rebels-deploy-peacekeepers-in-idlib.ashx#ixzz3I39Ul6iz).

Even former deputy leader of JaN, Abu Mariya al-Qahtani warned both sides that the infighting was only implementing the wishes of the regime and the West to bury the Syrian revolution. Strikingly, while claiming there is western intrusion into some FSA factions, he also said it was undeniable that some jihadi groups (including JAN) are infiltrated by ISIS, and he criticised JaN for calling the SRF “apostates” (http://eldorar.com/node/62367).

JaN ignored all this and pressed its attack. According to some sources, JaN sent in reinforcements and attacked with tanks and heavy weaponry; some unconfirmed reports claim they received aid from ISIS.

Since then, JaN has also attacked other FSA units in the region. For example, JaN threatened to storm the town of Kafr Nab, forcing the FSA’s Fursan Haq (5th corps) to surrender and hand over its weaponry (https://7al.me/?p=6980); and a jihadist group allied to JaN captured fighters of the FSA’s Sinjar Martyr’s Brigade (https://twitter.com/uygaraktas/status/528907016857587712). Meanwhile, another FSA brigade, the Dawn of Freedom Brigades, gave JaN 72 hours to give the captured areas back to the SRF, threatening otherwise to attack JaN (Dawn of Freedom is also one of the FSA brigades fighting alongside the Kurdish YPG in defense of Kobani against ISIS). On November 7, JaN killed the Dawn of Freedom commander, Tamer Haj Omar (https://twitter.com/aleppomedia…/status/530805493309382657).

The only group actually joining JaN’s attack was Jund al-Aqsa, a militia of foreign (Chechen) jihadists, previously aligned to ISIS.

JaN and SRF apparently signed at least one ceasefire, allowing for exchange of prisoners and attendance at a sharia court (http://malcolmxtreme.wordpress.com/2014/11/02/1122014/), but JaN had already demanded that SRF and Hazm leaders face a “sharia court” led by Shaykh al-Muhaysini, an al-Qaeda Saudi cleric (http://t.co/AhHgPDuXna), who works to try to reunify JaN with ISIS (http://www.dailystar.com.lb/…/275838-al-qaeda-still…).

Importantly, despite some minor JaN-Hazm clashes in Aleppo, the two organisations got together with the other major forces in that region – major FSA units, Islamic Front organisations, Jaish Mujahedeen (moderately Islamist-leaning coalition), Ansar al-Dine, Authenticity Front and so on signed an agreement to prevent the infighting reaching Aleppo (https://twitter.com/archicivilians/status/528209765663399936/photo/1).

However, several days later JaN attacked the FSA’s Fursan Al Shimal brigade’s headquarters in Menagh in Aleppo. Fursan Al Shamal responded by accusing JaN of carrying out a criminal war on the FSA & of implementing the ISIS project.
This course of events, and JaN’s apparent drive to subdue as much of the FSA throughout the region as possible, suggests that other explanations for the events are at best irrelevant.

The most popular discourse is that Maarouf and his SRF are profiteers, are bandits, they extort money and so on. There is certainly enough circumstantial evidence of this, as there is for many FSA units starved of arms and money in comparison with flush jihadist groups like JaN. The widespread allegations against Maarouf are neither of the “worst case” variety yet nor are they benign; it may well be that he had alienated a section of the population, enough to not want to put up a defence. Evidence is mixed on this. However, while this may be interesting background, it appears to have nothing to do with the cause of the clashes, a JaN accounts of the actual events are largely in agreement with the above account – the attack was not set off by SRF extorting money etc, it was not in response to the populace calling on JaN to liberate them from the SRF, and JaN’s attack is far more general against FSA groups.

The other assertion, mainly on pro-JaN social media networks, is that the SRF stabbed JaN in the back during its very brief attempt to seize the Idlib government building from the regime two weeks ago, just before these events. However, JaN itself has not accused the SRF of this, merely claiming the SRF carried out its arrest operation while JaN was “distracted” by its adventure. In fact, the extent of the attack on the SRF shows it must have been pre-planned, and as such JaN’s attempt to seize central Idlib increasingly looks like a diversion to boost its credentials before going on to attack its real target.

Background: SRF and JaN

The SRF is a major coalition of secularist FSA militias in the northwest, based in Idlib, Aleppo, Hama and northern Latakia provinces, with an estimated 15-25,000 fighters; an organisationally separate Southern SRF is based in the south in Deraa. The SRF was formed in December 2013 by 14 FSA brigades in the northwest (http://carnegie-mec.org/syriaincrisis/?fa=53910). The largest was the Idlib-based Syrian Martyr’s Brigade, led by Jamal Maarouf, which then claimed about 10,000 fighters, one of the largest stand-alone FSA brigades in the country. Maarouf then became the main leader of the SRF.

Maarouf is a former construction worker who joined the revolution from the outset, and the allegations of profiteering and the like ought to be set next to the fact that he has lost a great deal of his family, immediate and extended, due to regime, ISIS and now JaN violence.

Importantly, equally large numbers of secularist FSA brigades in the north-west, for various reasons not entirely clear, did not join SRF, although appear to be generally aligned; many of these are associated with a looser coalition formed around the same time, the Free Syria Union (http://notgeorgesabra.wordpress.com/2013/11/25/for-a-civil-secular-state-100-groups-unite-in-the-union-of-free-syrians).

Thus, the SRF consists of brigades which, along with the other FSA brigades, had driven the Assad regime out of nearly all of Idlib and kept it as a preserve of the revolution; this occurred long before there was such a thing as JaN. Then in January 2014, the SRF led the attack on ISIS in coordination with other rebel brigades (both FSA and non-FSA) which drove ISIS right out of Idlib, Hama and Aleppo.

JaN of course is the Syrian affiliate of al-Qaida, but to date has been far more moderate in its practice than the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS), which was expelled from al-Qaida for being unnecessarily barbaric. Since JaN and ISIS separated in April 2013 (ISIS taking the more reactionary and most of the foreign fighters), JaN has largely fought on the side of the FSA and moderate Islamist forces against the Assad regime and ISIS, and by and large has not tried to forcibly impose extreme “Islamist” repression on populations the way ISIS does.

In addition, due to having lots of money and arms from the oppositionist bourgeoisie in the Gulf, JaN has been more effective than many FSA units, which, despite the media’s Orwellian obsession with calling them “Western-backed rebels,” have barely ever got a bone from “the West.” This has meant that many former FSA fighters, or fighters with little ideological commitment that would otherwise have been in the FSA, have joined JaN, without supporting its reactionary Sunni sectarian ideology.
This has also helped moderate the practice of JaN on the ground. For example, when JaN and AaS briefly liberated Raqqa from ISIS in January, they liberated two churches and removed the black jihadist flags that ISIS had put on their spires – because JaN in Raqqa was by then largely composed of FSA entryists (http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/01/rise-fall-isil-syria-201411572925799732.html).

All the above means that, for most of the year from mid-2013 to mid-2014, the SRF and JaN have largely fought on the same side; it also shows that the SRF is a very powerful coalition. The questions therefore arise: why has Nusra decided to launch all-out war on the SRF, its previous quasi-ally (or did the SRF launch war on Nusra?); how did Nusra seemingly defeat so quickly the powerful SRF; and what are the implications for the revolution.

Further background: The US push for Sawha and mutual rebel suicide

One important piece of background is the long-term US goal of turning any slavish sections of the FSA it can dupe into a “Sawha” that proves its worth to the US by attacking JaN (named after the movement the US and Saudi Arabia armed to defeat al-Qaida in Iraq in 2007-8). The US has been pushing the FSA into this since 2012 (http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/middle-east/americas-hidden-agenda-in-syrias-war); overwhelmingly, it is the main condition on which the US has offered to perhaps send a few guns to some select FSA units, and the US makes clear they want the FSA to do this before taking on Assad. In the circumstances, it is difficult to conceive of this as anything other than a US plan for mutual destruction of democratic and jihadist anti-Assad forces.

The FSA has always rejected this “advice”; according to FSA Colonel Akaidi, then heading the Aleppo military council, “if they [the US] help us so that we kill each other, then we don’t want their help” (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/71e492d0-acdd-11e2-9454-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2UPVgOFXt).

While the SRF and the rest of the FSA, and Islamic Front, launched their own attack, for their own reasons, on ISIS, this was simply not good enough for the US; two further conditions were demanded for serious US assistance: that they also attack JaN (even though JaN had joined the attack on ISIS), and that they use any weapons only against ISIS, but not the regime.
The question some are asking then is, did Maarouf and the SRF accept the US poisoned chalice and agree to launch an attack on JaN, or at least not work with it? Some of the anti-SRF propaganda around at the moment seems to suggest this. If it were true it would help explain the rout. Yet I have not seen a shred of evidence for this. In fact, to the question of whether he would fight JaN in an interview several months ago, Maarouf replied:

“It’s clear that I’m not fighting against al-Qa’ida. This is a problem outside of Syria’s border, so it’s not our problem. I don’t have a problem with anyone who fights against the regime inside Syria” (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/i-am-not-fighting-againstalqaida-itsnot-our-problem-says-wests-last-hope-in-syria-9233424.html). As the SRF had just driven ISIS out of Idlib, it was clear he was talking about JaN, and in fact he released a statement saying he had only referred to JaN and did not use the word “al-Qaida,” accusing the Independent of twisting his words.

The article maintained that Maarouf “admits to fighting alongside Jabhat al-Nusra” and he says:
“If the people who support us tell us to send weapons to another group, we send them. They asked us a month ago to send weapons to Yabroud [to JaN in a fight with the regime] so we sent a lot of weapons there. When they asked us to do this, we do it.”

While media has continually referred to the SRF as “western-backed” etc, and it is routinely claimed that it is one of the US-“vetted” groups that have received a handful of US TOW anti-tank weapons since April 2014, evidence is slim at best, and in that interview Maarouf claimed “We have received lots of promises from the US, but so far nothing more.”

In any case, the receipt of small numbers of TOWs was largely irrelevant: Hazm, which was the first group to openly receive US TOWs in April, declared later that it would not fight JaN, that the US weapons were few and far between (http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-syria-harakat-hazm-20140907-story.html#page=1), and then, when the US attacked JaN, under the guise of attacking ISIS, Hazm issued one of the most powerful statements opposing the US bombing (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ByPSsxMIYAQy2Wt.jpg). Likewise, the SRF joined a dozen or so other large FSA-linked or Islamist brigades and denounced the US air strikes as an aid to the Assad regime (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ByUiHcTIMAAmTDF.jpg).

Therefore, my estimation is that these allegations have no substance, and, unless clear information is provided, they constitute little more than slander.

Jabhat al-Nusra’s evolution

But if the SRF didn’t walk into this US trap, what are some factors that have led to JaN’s power and purpose here?

On the question of purpose, it first needs to be understood that while JaN had clearly changed, and was no ISIS, it remained an anti-democratic, Sunni-sectarian organisation at the level of leadership and ideology. Revolutions have a way of making things appear not what they seem, or even turning organisations effectively into vehicles for movements they may theoretically have little to do with. The mass entry of non-jihadists into JaN, described above, is a case in point. Revolutionary forces on the ground have to relate to such realities, and make life and death choices. In the context of struggle against enemies as murderous as Assad and ISIS, the FSA and other rebels had every right to work with JaN as long as it worked against regime and ISIS. And western leftists who disapproved would rightfully be seen as less than an irrelevance to such decisions.

However, curiously, some supporters of the Syrian revolution who understood all this have lost their balance and come out supporting JaN. It is a strange phenomenon to confuse the above tactical life and death necessities for the FSA with getting oneself politically confused about the nature of a Sunni sectarian group when it attacks the secular FSA, whatever excuses about “corruption” it may cynically cite.

The fact is, JaN was never more than a fair-weather friend. Going back, in the first half of 2013, the FSA was already constantly, if sporadically, clashing with JaN to defend populations against religious repression or to defend themselves. While this largely disappeared following the JaN-ISIS split, JaN still remained in an elusive position outside the main bodies of the revolution. When the SRF first launched war on ISIS in January 2014, Idlib JaN declared neutrality. Soon after, JaN in Aleppo, Raqqa and Deir-Ezzor joined the united rebel attack on ISIS. The last to join the attack on ISIS, it was also the first to call for a ceasefire, just four days later (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/09/world/middleeast/syrian-rebels-said-to-oust-qaeda-linked-group-from-its-aleppo-headquarters.html?_r=0), though this did not eventuate.

Then when JaN leader Joulani gave ISIS an ultimatum in February to accept arbitration and end its “plague” against Syrian people or face getting wiped out, in the same breath he slammed the opposition exile-based Supreme Military Command of the FSA as “infidels” (http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/25/us-syria-crisis-islamists-idUSBREA1O0TN20140225).

In May, the major Islamic Front groups joined four other Islamist coalitions, including the prominent, moderate Jaish Mujahideen in Aleppo and the Ajnad Islamic Union in Damascus, and signed a “Revolutionary Covenant,” which pledged support for freedom and human rights and the rule of law in a “multi-ethnic and multi-sectarian” Syria “without any sort of pressure or dictations” (http://justpaste.it/fi2u), effectively nullifying the harder-sounding “Islamist” rhetoric of the original Islamic Front declaration 8 months earlier. Only JaN rejected and condemned this covenant (http://syriadirect.org/main/36-interviews/1387-nusra-rejects-trials-for-regime-figures-demands-death-by-sword). Then when nearly all the larger rebel formations, secular FSA and mainstream Islamist, formed the Syrian Revolutionary Command Council in August to coordinate their war on regime and ISIS, only JaN was not involved.

Factors propelling Nusra’s strength and actions

Thus this was the reality of JaN when two huge events, ISIS’ spectacular conquest of Mosul in June, and the US attack on ISIS and JaN in Syria in September, helped lead JaN into its new regressive turn.

The ISIS-led conquest of Mosul galvanised jihadists throughout the region. Suddenly ISIS, having been driven out of most of Syria, was again eclipsing JaN, indeed had shown jihadists what victory over “infidels” means. This had the effect of boosting the more jihadist forces within JaN at the expense of ex-FSA cadre and non-ideological recruits, while also forcing JaN’s leadership – always Sunni-sectarian despite its changed practice – to “compete” harder with ISIS for the jihadist “vote.” In fact, these latest events were not the first JaN provocation during this new period – several months ago JaN had attacked the SRF in Idlib, accusing its cadre of crimes such as insulting people, being infidels and drinking wine (http://justpaste.it/gbni).

This was uneven throughout the country, however – in Aleppo, JaN’s alliance with other rebels remained firm; in the south, it remained mostly firm, except for some JaN arrests of individual FSA leaders who they accused of collaborating with Jordan or Israel to sell out the struggle (with little evidence provided). In the east, in Deir Ezzor, JaN and its FSA and IF allies held on against a furious joint siege by ISIS backed by Assad bombs, but some JaN units in the east defected to ISIS.

According to analyst Paola Pisi, this defeat of the Deir Ezzor resistance was itself a major factor in JaN’s new strength in Idlib, as it led to the mass expulsion of JaN cadre from the east, mostly towards traditional FSA regions (north-west, south), greatly boosting their numbers vis a vis SRF and others.

Pisi also notes that, at the same time, JaN was flush with money to buy advanced weapons due to its engagement in the hostage business – it acquired, from Qatar, $25million ransom to free Golan peacekeepers and $100 million for US hostage Theo Curtis – all this on top of the fact that JaN has always had more money and arms from the Gulf than the miserable bunch of nothing much that “the West” has ever provided to the “western-backed rebels.”

Then when the US intervened and immediately massacred civilians, and bombed JaN along with ISIS even though JaN had not been acting like ISIS, and had been fighting ISIS, this had a number of effects. First, it boosted the view that this was a US “war on Islam,” and so tended to push the “anti-imperialist” jihadists (ie, those targeted by US air strikes) into the same camp, with various JaN cadre issuing pro-ISIS statements (though the leadership issued a statement warning against allowing the US strikes to breed illusions in ISIS); dozens of JaN cadre defected to ISIS, subjecting JaN to further pressure to compete.

Second, it led to a surge of support to both ISIS and JaN – that ISIS would gain any support was remarkable in and of itself, yet pro-ISIS demonstrations erupted as far west as Idlib, where no ISIS existed; but since most Syrians found this unpalatable even in these circumstances, the swing to “anti-imperialist” jihadism went mostly to JaN. In mass demonstrations throughout Aleppo (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ByTcYjYCcAEeOnA.jpg:large), Idlib (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ww2LT-Wcpcc&feature=youtu.be) and Homs, demonstrators chanted “We are all Nusra” or “Jabhat al-Nusra came to support us when the world abandoned us” (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ByTtNQkIYAETWtU.jpg:large).

Further, this also forced the rest of the FSA to take a stand; the US attack on JaN was mainly pressed the first week, and since then the US has focused more closely on ISIS, suggesting the aim was more to cause confusion, division and splits within the revolution camp rather than to militarily decimate JaN; in other words, the US was trying to force the FSA – especially those who had received a few TOWs – to show their worth by finally taking the US’ poisoned chalice. As my article showed (https://mkaradjis.wordpress.com/2014/09/25/syrian-rebels-overwhelmingly-condemn-us-bombing-as-an-attack-on-revolution), the rebels rightly overwhelmingly rejected this US trap and condemned the US attack as an attack in the revolution. This is probably the background to the more open declarations by US leaders in the last few weeks that the FSA is not part of its anti-ISIS strategy, that there is no coordination with the FSA, that the US does not trust the FSA, that the US plan to train “vetted” rebels to fight ISIS does not even mean the FSA, but rather the US will start from scratch, and that they must only fight ISIS and not the regime (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/10/14/no-syrian-rebels-allowed-at-isis-war-conference.html, http://www.businessinsider.com.au/the-us-has-officially-given-up-on-the-free-syrian-army-2014-10, http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2014/10/15/5244747/its-official-us-wont-be-working.html#.VESY0hZ0Yg9#storylink=cpy, http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/syrians-to-be-trained-to-defend-territory-not-take-ground-from-jihadists-officials-say/2014/10/22/8ca13cf2-5a17-11e4-bd61-346aee66ba29_story.html).

The US had tested the FSA, and it has proudly failed this imperialist test (no doubt much to the chagrin of the pro-Genocide Regime sections of the western “anti-imperialist” left).

But this refusal of the FSA, including the SRF and Hazm, to be the Sawha would have made them safer from being painted as traitors by JaN. However, other factors militated against this. First, the opposition exile leadership (the Syrian Opposition Coalition) supported the US attack; second, even the mere fact that some FSA groups had received a few TOWs since April now opened them to accusations of being US agents, as was widely reported in the media, *despite their refusal to play this US game*. Especially since the US was so vocal about what it wanted to FSA groups to do with these weapons. In addition, their backers (the Saudis etc) were part of the US bombing coalition – ie, the US bombing-as-Assad’s-aircraft-coalition, as they see it.

In any case, another factor in JaN’s rapid victory was that the SRF did not really put up much of a fight. Maarouf explained that he withdrew from the villages in Jabal al-Zawiya to avoid massive civilian bloodshed all over Idlib. This suggests precisely that Maarouf still understood the disastrous nature of a full inter-rebel war (ie, he understood the poison of the US game which some accuse him of playing): an Idlib covered with inter-rebel blood will be the end of the revolution; and given JaN’s recent surge of power and obvious lust for conquest, such bloodshed was assured. Worse still, a frontal war may not have received broad rebel support (unlike the war on ISIS), and may also have led to a JaN-SRF war in Aleppo, Hama and the south.

On other hand, however, an Idlib turned into a Nusra emirate – as opposed to what it has been up to now, one of the strongest positions of the secularist FSA forces – is also a disaster. It would not be easy to be the ones making the tactical decisions about fight/no fight just now.

The US attack on Nusra and Islamic Front

On November 5, the US launched bombing raids on JaN and Ahrar Al-Sham throughout northern Idlib, on Harem, Sarmda, Kafer Darain, Bab al-Hawa, Rif Mahamyn, Binish, Basakba etc. These northern Idlib regions had not been involved in the Jan-SRF fighting in the south of the province.

The Pentagon claimed that these strikes “were not in response to the Nusrah Front’s clashes with the Syrian moderate opposition” in Idlib, and the “Khorasan” red-herring was again unearthed as the reason for the strikes on JaN (http://www.centcom.mil/en/news/articles/nov.-6-u.s.-military-forces-conduct-airstrikes-against-khorasan-group-terro).

However, one snag in that story is that Ahrar al-Sham was also bombed, even though no-one has connected them to “Khorasan,” and, for that matter, neither were they connected to the attack on SRF. Ahrar al-Sham said US strikes had levelled one of its bases near Bab al-Hawa, claiming 10 civilians, including children, were killed along with 16 AaS fighters, including the local commander, Abu- Taalha (http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2014/Nov-06/276728-syrias-ahrar-al-sham-says-coalition-strikes-on-it-killed-civilians-statement.ashx?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter#ixzz3IN0xFtGL).

As Syria expert Thomas Pierret tweeted, “No doubt left: Asad now has an extra airforce with F22s in it.”

So, just as the US used the excuse of attacking ISIS in September to attack JaN, which was then largely allied to the Syrian rebels against the regime and ISIS, so now the US uses the excuse of attacking JaN to attack the mainstream Islamist Front.
The aim appears precisely to push the IF towards JaN, while pushing JaN towards ISIS, so that then the US and Assad can jointly bomb hell out of all of the “Islamic terrorists” together, and further split the FSA along the lines of solidarity with Islamists getting bombed versus joining US camp due to being pushed into a corner. And then the US can say “see, as we’ve said for years, the moderates are so small and ineffective, there’s no alternative to Assad if we want to defeat jihadists” and so on, the same game for years.

And the exile-based Syrian Opposition Coalition (SOC) played right into this trap by “requesting coordinated air strikes” on JaN, when I didn’t even hear Maarouf calling for them (http://tinyurl.com/mya4w4h). The only problem with US Sawha strategy was that they had been unsuccessfully goading the FSA to attack JaN first (so they could kill each other), whereas it was not the FSA but JaN that unwittingly played their game. The bombing of JaN, and even the neutral AaS, just after the Idlib events appears aimed at further trying to exacerbate the conflict and further try to force the FSA into the US pocket.

Faysal Itani gives a reasonably good summary of the US policy:

“From the start, the US-led air campaign in Syria—and the accompanying chorus of official statements—have endangered Syrian moderates. US airstrikes on JAN positions (including in Idlib) in the campaign’s opening days were an early indication that actual US policy was directly at odds with claimed US support for the nationalist opposition. While JAN is a US-designated terrorist group, it is also a potent actor in the beleaguered anti-regime insurgency that has received little US support. Relations between JAN and the mainstream insurgency had varied from hostility to uneasy cooperation against ISIS and the regime. Because the moderates are aligned with the United States, US airstrikes on JAN immediately produced a new and powerful rival to already vulnerable moderate forces. By striking JAN without sufficiently strengthening its moderate counterparts first, and promising (publicly, no less) to use them to fight JAN and not the regime, the United States made the opposition appear just threatening enough to provoke JAN, but not so threatening as to deter the jihadist group. The results are on clear display in Idlib” (http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/menasource/what-went-wrong-in-idlib?utm_content=buffer5ecba&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer#.VFjjW_oeG2c.twitter).

Assad regime emboldened by US bombing

However, analysts need to get over the idea that the 4-year US policy is “misguided,” “ineffective” and so on. Taking into account the home truth that the US would in general much prefer the victory of a mega-capitalist tyranny over an armed revolutionary populace, the entire US strategy becomes very effective and deliberate.

As the regime bombs Idlib right at the same time as does the US, as has been occurring also in Aleppo, in Deir Ezzor and elsewhere; with appearances of US drones just before Assad bombings regularly reported; with statements by US and other western leaders daily becoming softer (ie, more honest) on Assad and his Iranian allies; as we read that “US officials are beginning to see Assad as a vital de facto ally in the fight” against ISIS (http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/10/15/obama_turkey_islamic_state_terror_kurds_nato_invasion); as we read of the “belief in Washington that the fall of the Assad regime would be ill-conducive to what President Barack Obama views as the more urgent goal of defeating ISIS” and indeed “[The US] might even be nervous if the Assad regime were to go” (https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/reportsfeatures/564187-turkish-intervention-talk-more-bark-than-bite); as a workshop of imperialist strategists organised by the Rand Corporation decided that “regime collapse, while not considered a likely outcome, was perceived to be the worst possible outcome for U.S. strategic interests” (http://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE129.html); it seems only the most still deluded by “anti-imperialist” illusions in the genocide-regime can’t see the US has emerged as Assad’s new air-force.

Certainly Assad knows it; “with global attention focused on the fight against jihadists, Syria’s regime has in recent weeks stepped up its use of deadly barrel bomb strikes, killing civilians and wreaking devastation. In less than a fortnight, warplanes have dropped at least 401 barrel bombs on rebel areas in eight provinces, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an anti-regime monitoring group based in Britain.”

The Observatory said at least 232 civilians have been killed in regime air strikes, including barrel bomb attacks, since Oct. 20 (http://tinyurl.com/ozktbos). Regime helicopters barrel bombed a refugee camp in Idlib last Wednesday, killing and wounding dozens of people; then on November 5, the airforce bombed a school in Qaboun in the rebel-controlled Damascus suburbs, murdering 17 children. The regime’s everyday practice of torturing prisoners to death continues apace: last week “74 bodies of detainees tortured to death by Syrian security forces have been delivered to their families in the eastern towns of Homs province in four days” (https://zamanalwsl.net/en/news/7357.html). Roughly one Palestinian from the regime-besieged Yarmouk camp is tortured to death each day, as the regime maintains a criminal starvation siege and has now cut off water. As the regime steps up sieges of other Damascus suburbs, there are reports of 103 children and 5 adults who have died in Douma due to lack of food/medicine from the blockade (http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sds5f3 ). The regime is also carrying out a genocidal siege of the Homs region of al-Waer, where tens of thousands of people are trapped, and hundreds have died, all entirely ignored by the whole world (https://www.zamanalwsl.net/en/news/7062.html).

Many have said the regime has been able to step up its war on the revolution because the US is taking care of its other enemy, ISIS; the regime has its back free, so to speak. The problem with this analysis is that even before the US intervention, ISIS wasn’t bothering the regime at all; the regime diverted no energy away from suppressing the uprising towards fighting ISIS at all; on the contrary, often enough, Assad and ISIS jointly attacked and besieged the FSA and its allied rebels.
Rather, the explanation is worse than that; the actuality of US intervention, in coordination with regime intelligence, has demonstrated to the regime in practice that imperialism is its ally as both bomb its country simultaneously.

Finally, back to Idlib

A final note on the Idlib events. How big a setback is JaN’s aggression against the SRF? This of course is too early to say.

First, why should it be considered a setback? Some are saying they are just as bad as each other, it is just a fight among thugs, or even that it is good that the clean JaN has driven out the corrupt FSA. This is entirely misguided.

Whatever the errors of its various components, the FSA stands for a democratic, non-sectarian Syria. JaN, whatever its compromises in practice with the FSA over the last year, is opposed to this and stands openly for a clerical regime which is explicitly Sunni-sectarian. While it has not in practice shown an ISIS-like tendency to openly slaughter minorities (despite some unclear or disputed cases), its explicit view that Alawites and Shittes can only be offered oppression under its rule can only strengthen the attachment of these minorities to the regime, despite the growing disenchantment among the Alawites with the regime, which includes open anti-regime demonstrations.

There is thus a huge difference between a JaN that is largely subordinate to the overall rebel alliance and an overconfident, aggressive JaN that seeks to become the dominant element.

The same applies if an arrogant JaN ruling unchallenged feels confident enough to impose a state of religious repression, even if to date it has not acted like ISIS. Unfortunately, Idlib JaN in particular looks headed that way, with a JaN “Islamic court in Darkoush executing a man and woman through stoning (https://t.co/TlrKDkEZOt). This is opposite of the liberatory spirit of the Syrian revolution, and most strikingly in Idlib, the heart and soul of the revolution in many ways, full of towns with names like Kafranbel, Saraqueb, Tatanaz and so on that supporters of the revolution recognise, where the most liberatory messages of the revolution have been projected to the world.

On a larger scale, a decisive JaN victory over secular or other non-jihadist forces plays directly into the hands of the US and Assad, and their “anti-terrorist war” discourse as explained above.

If SRF corrupt practices contributed to their own defeat, that of course should be criticised, but that does not alter the fact that they have thereby contributed to a setback for the revolution.

Second, however, we also need to assess what the extent of the JaN victory is over the secular forces.

Maarouf claimed “we liberated [Idlib] from the regime, and from ISIS, and we will liberate it from you.” It is hard to say how realistic this is. While evidence of Maarouf’s corruption suggests it is significant and he may have burnt some of his bridges with locals, an overconfident JaN will likely also burn its bridges with the populace if it imposes religious repression. This will be even more so if the suggestions that Idlib JaN is closer to ISIS than elsewhere.

Also, with SRF forces largely intact, their flow out of Idlib into neighbouring Hama and Aleppo may now boost the struggle against the regime on those fronts. Much has been claimed about SRF and Hazm troops defecting to JaN, but very little concrete evidence has emerged. In Syrian conditions, even defectors may essentially be doing “entry” work, like the FSA’s Raqqa Revolutionaries Brigade, which spent some 8 months inside Raqqa JaN before re-emerging in April (it is now also fighting in Kobane alongside the YPG against ISIS).

In addition, the refusal of other Islamist brigades to join JaN’s attack and their attempts to negotiate show a positive degree of coordination; it also suggests that if JaN over-reaches, it may end up encouraging a rebel coalition against it. It is also important to remember that while JaN is attacking other FSA units in the region, it may have much less dirt on many of them than it apparently has on Maarouf’s group – it may be one thing to defeat a group with a reputation and another to successfully rule an Idlib emirate with the rest of the FSA and IF subordinate or crushed. Large numbers of non-SRF FSA groups also still cover north-west Syria, and it is uncertain that even the SRF has been expelled from the whole of Idlib – the battles occurred in the south.

Despite the overall grim situation, as defense against criminal regime sieges becomes paramount in Aleppo, Hama, Homs and Damascus suburbs, all just as critical and horrific, if not far more so, than the ISIS siege of Kobane, we should remember that the Syrian revolution has often had a way of showing extraordinary resilience and coming up with bewildering surprises.

By Michael Karadjis

In extraordinary developments, the United States, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Jordan have launched a joint air war, on Syrian territory, with the full support of the Syrian tyranny of Bashar al-Assad, on the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (ISIS).

There are plenty of good reasons to oppose any US war in any circumstances; and in this case, a war that is targeting only the Sunni-sectarian ISIS, yet sparing the viciously anti-Sunni Assad regime, indeed collaborating with the regime, which is responsible for a hundred times more massacre and destruction than ISIS, with which it has long collaborated in any case, is likely to boost support for ISIS among a large section of the poverty-stricken, dispossessed Sunni majority.
However, ISIS is so reviled that it was just possible a very well-targeted war on ISIS may have won some hearts and minds. Certainly, even for those of us solidly anti-war, there should be no talk of “defending” ISIS, whatever that may mean. Likewise, if last year’s proposed (in my view imaginary) US attack on the Assad regime had become reality, it would have been necessary to oppose the war without giving a skerrick of “defense” to the genocidal regime that had just gassed hundreds of sleeping children to death with sarin.

The US launches war on Jabhat al-Nusra

However, the US is not only attacking ISIS – which the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and the united rebel alliance has been at war with for the last year – but from the outset has also attacked Jabhat al-Nusra (JaN). Despite also being a sectarian organisation which the FSA will have to deal with in the future in its own time, based on its own decision-making, JaN has for the most part been fighting on the side of the FSA and the other rebels against both the Assad regime and ISIS.
There have also been unconfirmed reports that the US has attacked Ahrar al-Sham in Aleppo – AaS is what might be called the most “jihadist” wing of the Syrian rebels other than JaN, which, however, unlike JaN, is not associated with al-Qaida. AaS has been operationally allied to the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and, along with the FSA, has been at war with both the regime and with ISIS. US officials seemed unconcerned by the possibility – one explained “we’re characterizing our targets as Khorasan and [ISIS] but it’s possible others were there. It is a toxic soup of terrorists” (http://www.buzzfeed.com/mikegiglio/us-goes-to-war-with-jabhat-al-nusra#39p8mlr).

In other words, the US and its allies have taken advantage of the revulsion against the clerical-fascist ISIS barbarians to launch an attack on the Syrian revolution on behalf of the secular-fascist Assad regime.

According to early reports from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, US air strikes killed 50 Al-Nusra militants and eight civilians, including children, in northern Syria on Tuesday (http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2014/Sep-23/271641-eight-civilians-30-fighters-killed-in-us-led-strikes-on-nusra-front-in-syria-activists.ashx#ixzz3E8z2uYK4). “Northern Syria” here refers to Idlib and Aleppo.

For the record, there is no ISIS whatsoever in Idlib – ISIS was driven out root and branch by the FSA’s Syrian Revolutionaries Front (SRF) in January, probably the most successful anti-ISIS operation carried out by any of the forces at one time or another fighting ISIS, whether the Syrian Army, the Iraqi Army or the Kurdish forces.

Yet while ISIS is comprehensively absent, the US air force launched a series of air strikes on the Kafr Dariyan region of Idlib, killing dozens of al-Nusra militants, while the civilian death toll shot up considerably compared to the initial reports (https://www.facebook.com/RadioFreeSyria/posts/706573779427832). Here’s also video footage of this terror: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnQMgCo0Z2I. According to Nusra, their weapons factory near Sarmada in rural Idlib – where they produce weapons to fight the regime and ISIS – was targeted by US airstrikes (https://twitter.com/JihadNews2/status/514264176060301312).

In particular, given the grave situation in Aleppo, where the revolutionary forces are being jointly besieged from the south and the north-east by Assad and ISIS, the fact that the first US attacks were on JaN inside Aleppo – where JaN is playing an important role in the epic defense of the rebel-held, working—class, half of that city, alongside the FSA and other Islamist groups – is perhaps the most blatant attack on the revolution possible.

Perhaps once the revolutionary forces have been crushed in Aleppo, Assad and ISIS may fight: the former will then present the world with a fait accompli, it’s my regime or ISIS, while the latter will present the impoverished, Assad-hating Sunni masses with precisely the opposite dilemma.

That is why the defense of Aleppo now is all important. And at precisely that moment, dozens of Nusra fighters have been slaughtered by US bombers right there, in Aleppo. According to Nusra, “US airstrikes (with the help of Qatar, KSA, Jordan, UAE) hit positions of Jabhat an Nusra in Rural Muhandiseen Aleppo” (https://twitter.com/JihadNews2/status/514264771060072449) and scores of fighters were martyted in Jabhat al-Nusra headquarters in Urm al-Sogra, Aleppo (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ByM2AKsCcAEO31v.jpg:large).

Oddly, US warplanes have also bombed positions in Jabal Sha’er in Homs countryside, killing some Bedouins (https://twitter.com/SN4HR/status/514407392801718272). It is unclear what the intended targets were.
Seniorj Jabhat al-Nusra leader, Muhsin al Fadhli, was martyred by the US bombing (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ByNu9kqCcAAjfSE.jpg:large), as was Abū Yusuf at-Turkī, Nusra’s no.1 sniper, in US air strikes on Idlib.
The Assad regime must be very pleased with having acquired for itself a new airforce.

Some background

These developments are remarkable not for the fact they happened – this was basically my exact prognosis in June (www.links.org.au/node/3928) based on class analysis – but rather in its sheer brazenness and rapidity. That a US attack “on ISIS’ in Syria will become an attack on the revolution, via the device of attacking al-Nusra. Despite the jihadist Nusra leadership, much of its ranks are decent revolutionaries, often former FSA cadre just going where the money and arms are; and despite some its recent provocations (caused by the impact of ISIS’ victory in Mosul on the more jihadist part of the ranks), it still mostly fights the regime and ISIS. Attacking JaN is a way of attacking the revolution, just as the US has been trying to turn the FSA into a Sawha against JaN (not only against ISIS) since 2012 (http://www.thenational.ae/…/americas-hidden-agenda-in…). The FSA has always rejected this imperialist “advice.” According to FSA Colonel Akaidi last year, the US wants to turn the FSA “into the Sahwa,” but “if they [the US] help us so that we kill each other, then we don’t want their help” (http://www.ft.com/…/71e492d0-acdd-11e2-9454…). Then we had the recent UN resolution against ISIS that just happened to also be against JaN as well, nicely slipped in by Obama.

Assad regime hails US attacks

Furthermore, all this is in the context of the open collaboration between the US (and its Saudi, UAE etc allies) and the Assad regime, which the US informed of the attacks, with which the US is sharing intelligence, and which has expressed strong support for the US attacks on its own country.

Ali Haidar, Syrian minister for national reconciliation, told Reuters:

“As for the raids in Syria, I say that what has happened so far is proceeding in the right direction in terms of informing the Syrian government and by not targeting Syrian military installations and not targeting civilians” (http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/24/us-syria-crisis-minister-idUSKCN0HJ19S20140924?utm_source=twitter).
The US strikes have of course killed some dozens of civilians, but that is hardly a concern of a regime that has killed so many tens of thousands of civilians, as a grand underestimate.

Meanwhile, the pro-government news network Damascus Now hailed the strikes as a historic moment, in which “happiness was etched on the faces of the majority of Syrians, because they found international support towards eradicating a cancer which has been rooted in the diseased Syrian body,” referring to the rebels (http://syriadirect.org/rss/1580-syria-direct-news-update-9-24-14), and the regime’s Al-Watan newspaper declared “the US coalition and the Syrian Arab Army are on the same front against terrorism” (https://twitter.com/MousaAlomar/status/514789879180701697/photo/1).

Mass revulsion against US strikes

Revulsion has erupted right across Syria. In mass demonstrations throughout Aleppo (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ByTcYjYCcAEeOnA.jpg:large), Idlib (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ww2LT-Wcpcc&feature=youtu.be) and Homs, demonstrators chant “We are all Nusra” or “Jabhat al-Nusra came to support us when the world abandoned us” (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ByTtNQkIYAETWtU.jpg:large).

Now, as stated above, I certainly don’t love Nusra. But these chants mean the people identify with those getting bombed by Assad’s newly acquired airforce. For those who want to emphasise the reactionary nature of the Nusra leadership (which I would distinguish from its ranks), this development underlines the fact that creating counterrevolution works in differing ways: one way is to directly militarily attack a militia, like Nusra, that *at this point* is on the side of the revolutionary forces; another is to put extra pressure on the more pro-Western elements within the FSA to take the US side against Nusra, thus weakening and splitting their forces on the ground; and a third way is precisely allowing Nusra to denounce anyone who doesn’t support it now as a US agent, thus exactly strengthening Nusra, the most jihadist pole, within the anti-Assad, anti-ISIS front.

Though this is by no means straightforward. The “we are all Nusra” chants may simply be identifying with those under US attack rather than expressing political support for Nusra; thus these demonstrations could equally be seen as a new, clearer anti-imperialist grounding of the revolution. It may take some time to work through what this dilemma means.

But worse is the fact that by allowing its attack on ISIS – who everyone hates – to become an attack on Nusra, and a collaboration with the regime, which all rebel forces and most of the impoverished, dispossessed Sunni masses see as their main enemy, the attacks have also led to a surge in support for ISIS in some quarters. To see mass demonstrations in support not only of Nusra, but also of ISIS, in areas as far west as Homs (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlsxciMWxQQ&feature=youtu.be), and Idlib, underlines the multiple ways in which imperialist attack promotes counterrevolution: a mass demonstration supporting ISIS even occurred in Kafranbel in Idlib (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2WegUb7Omc&feature=youtu.be, https://www.youtube.com/embed/V3-BRbeGmTI?feature=player_detailpage), the very heart and soul of the revolution!

The reactions of the FSA and other rebels

In any case, it is the reactions from the FSA and other rebels which are most remarkable.

One of the first statements condemning the US attacks came from Harakat Hazm, a 7000-strong secular FSA militia operating mostly in Hama. Hazm stated (23/9/2014):

“The Hazem Movement rejects the external intervention of the US Coalition, which launched its first airstrikes on Tuesday in the governorates of Deir el Zour, Raqqa, al Hasaka, Aleppo, Idlib and Homs, with 11 civilians killed in rural Idlib province and five others in rural Homs province, as well as fighters from Jabhat al Nusra and the ISIS.

“These air attacks amount to *an attack on national sovereignty* and work to *undermine the Syrian revolution* and demonstrate the international community’s continuing ignorance of the demands of the Syrian revolution and failure to provide unconditional military aid to the FSA is simply an indication of massive failure and a harbinger of further catastrophes that will harm the entire region.

“We of the Hazem Movement hereby reaffirm our full commitment to the principles of the revolution, and emphasize that *our actions are guided solely by revolutionary principles and national interest, not by the demands of the international coalition.*

“We also affirm that the international community’s unilateral decisions taken in an effort to win public support globally will not succeed in combating extremism, but will actively promote its growth. The only way to achieve the peace in the nation and region will come through fulfilling the aspirations of the people of Syria at the hands of Syrians.

“The only beneficiaries from the US coalition’s military intervention will be the Assad regime, in the light of an absence of any real strategy to oust it, and the regime will spare no efforts in its attacks on civilians in its attempt to rehabilitate itself internationally.

“We pray for mercy for our martyrs, healing for our wounded, and freedom for the detainees imprisoned in Syria, and life and freedom for our beloved people” (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ByPSsxMIYAQy2Wt.jpg).

One of the extraordinary things about this statement is that, after all the years of “leftists” falsely asserting that the US was arming the FSA, when in fact it never sent them a bullet, is that Hazm is precisely one of the very few FSA units that *did* receive a handful of US anti-tank weapons beginning in April 2014. It was never very many, but Hazm could possibly have expected more if it palyed ball. This magnificent declaration indicates that while the US might be able to buy some dozens of puppets here and there, it is very difficult to buy an army of 7000 fighters to be your puppets.

Meanwhile, Jaish al-Mujadeen, a markedly soft-Islamist coalition that was set up last December and which then played a major role, alongside the FSA and important components of the Islamic Front (of which it is not a member), in driving ISIS out of Aleppo in January, also condemned the US attacks and said their aim was to put down the rebellion (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ClRaIMESbk&feature=youtu.be).

Abu Ratib, head of the Sufi-led Al-Haq Brigade, part of the Islamic Front, termed the intervention “a total war against Muslims” (http://syriadirect.org/rss/1580-syria-direct-news-update-9-24-14); Suqour al-Sham, the main Islamic Front unit in Idlib, condemned the airstrikes and said they “will breed more extremism and terrorism” (https://twitter.com/zaidbenjamin/status/514831422675513344/photo/1); the Army of islam, the IF unit in Damascus, which drove ISIS out of the Damascus region several months ago, also condemned the strikes; the secularist FSA Forqat 13 issued a statement condemning US-led airstrikes as “aimed at weakening the revolution” in Syria (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ByTaFn8IEAAANl3.png:large).

Then in a joint statement, the Syrian Revolutionaries Front (SRF – the major secular FSA coalition in the north-west, which single-handedly drove ISIS out of Idlib in January), Jaish al-Mujahidin, Al Zinki, Hazm and others condemned the US airstrikes, declaring “you help Bashar” (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ByUiHcTIMAAmTDF.jpg).

So while we haven’t yet accessed statements from every group, it is clear all the major groups have declared solidly against the US air war.

In similar vein, Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood spokesman Zuhair Salem declared “A new killer joins the band of the Syrian people killers. The war on Da’ash is an American pretext to continue the war on the Syrian revolution. We won’t wait for long to watch how the American war is eating revolutionary forces. We condemn the American crime of the aggression on Syrian territories” (https://twitter.com/zaidbenjamin). Earlier, a statement by the Syrian Islamic Council, close to the Muslim Brotherhood, rejected intervention in Syria by Western countries and their allies in the region. It condemned “the silence of the international community, Governments and organizations, at the daily massacres against the Syrians, with all kinds of internationally proscribed weapons, by the Assad regime,” describing the US move against ISIS in this context as a double standard (https://twitter.com/troublejee/status/510618525736894464). The MB itself rejected any collaboration with the US attack on ISIS unless the first bomb lands “on Assad’s head.”

Finally, the founder and former leader of the FSA, Colonel Riad al-Asaad, who still has significant influence, declared “The Coalition kills the remaining children that the Syrian regime couldn’t kill” (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ByO1CbHIIAABquB.jpg:large). Earlier, he had already declared that the FSA will not collaborate with the US in the war against ISIS, claiming the US is working to destroy the FSA, noting that since 2011 the Americans promised aid that never materialised, and meanwhile they worked to split the rebels and to help al-Assad.

Asaad claimed that the real target of the strikes would not be ISIS, but rather “the Syrian revolution will be eliminated under this pretext.” He also called on moderate rebels to make efforts for more unity to revive the Syrian revolution after having been hijacked by radical Islamist groups and West-backed agendas. “We are looking for rebel commanders who share us the national concern” (https://www.zamanalwsl.net/en/news/6704.html).

The Local Coordination Committees of Syria (LCCs), a grassroots network that coordinates civil disobedience and other non-violent campaigns, was a little more ambivalent, but have been documenting the civilian and other deaths from US air strikes. The LCC declared that “an end to the Islamic State needs to happen concurrently with an end to the equal terrorist threat represented by Bashar al-Assad’s regime,” and note that they “are herewith confirming their previous stances considering Assad’s regime the foremost enemy of the Syrian people and assuring that extremism and terrorism were the products of the regime’s crimes.”

LCC also emphasised the following:

1- Assad’s regime is holding the sole responsibility of this violation of the Syrian State’s sovereignty since it was the first to do that bringing the sectarian death militias from Iran, Iraq and Lebanon.
2- Assad’s regime and ISIS are alike when it comes to terrorism and crimes violating the Syrian people dignity and decent lives.
3- The necessity of coordinating with the political and military forces of the Syrian revolution so they can regain control of the positions under ISIS conquer as well as helping these forces with their continuous battles against Assad’s regime till it is toppled.
4- Taking intense precautions that these air strikes do not give any form of political or military benefits to Assad’s regime.
5- Taking extra care of the civilians’ lives and their properties in the targeted areas.
6- The United Nations must take its responsibility towards the civilians by immediately responding to their humanitarian basic needs.
7- The Syrians salvation from ISIS should be synchronized with their liberty of the tyrant Assad’s regime and its terrorism against them.
Local Coordination Committees (23/ 9/ 2014, from https://www.facebook.com/RadioFreeSyria/photos/a.382885705129976.91927.363889943696219/706708506081026/?type=1&fref=nf).

The only more or less clear support for the intervention came from the pro-West and Gulf leadership of the exile-based Syrian Opposition Coalition (SOC) and its associated Supreme Military Command, supposedly of the FSA but in reality largely representing itself. The SMC declared support to “all earnest national forces and free international forces” who are trying to “fight terrorism,” but stressed that this should start with “the Assad gangs and Shabiha” and “ending with their new creation, ie, ISIS” (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ByPX7XDIAAA7RNW.png).

The only other apparent support to the US coalition’s actions came from, somewhat understandably, the Kurdish PYD. PYD leader salih Moslem declared that the US attacks were a positive step for the fight against ISIS (http://civiroglu.net/2014/09/23/pyd_airstrikes/). Considering ISIS’ current genocidal attacks on the Syrian Kurds around Kobane which have driven some 150,000 Kurds acrosss the Turkish border (Turkey already holds 1.5 million Syrian refugees), the PYD’s position is understandable. It is unclear at this point, however, how much the US has targeted the ISIS units doing the besieging of Kobane – at the outset, at least, the US seems to have been too busy bombing ISIS in Raqqa (from where most ISIS militants had already been evacuated) and non-ISIS targets over in western Syria, to simply bomb the ISIS advancing front line around Kobane (just as the Assad regime, while good at bombing bakeries in Raqqa and killing dozens of civilians, also couldn’t seem to target the ISIS siege).

Where does this leave the US Sawha plans?

This rather solid opposition to the US air campaign from the bulk of the FSA and their allies on the ground raises serious issues regarding the US intention to arm and train a small puppet segment of the FSA as a Sawha to fight ISIS, and premably Nusra, but not the regime. It seems likely there will be relatively few takers. Of course many may officially agree in order to get the arms, and then hope to do as they please and direct their energies at the regime; but the current united stand against the US shows not only that the FSA are not puppets, but moreover has rubbbed this fact in the US’ face. Hazm seems to have performed this trick earlier this year to get some US anti-tank weapons; it now releases the most solidly anti-imperialist declaration.

It is worthwhile looking at the full text of the resolution in Congress to provide “training, equipment, supplies, and sustainment” some 5000 “vetted” rebels (https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/hjres124/text). Anyone in doubt that the aim is for them to fight ISIS but not the regime only needs to read the opening, which states the purpose is firstly, for “defending the Syrian people from attacks by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), and securing territory controlled by the Syrian opposition,” secondly, “protecting the United States, its friends and allies, and the Syrian people from the threats posed by terrorists in Syria, and thirdly, the bit that refers to the regime, “promoting the conditions for a negotiated settlement to end the conflict in Syria.” So, smash ISIS (and Nusra), and negotiate with the regime.

More interesting is the section on what “vetted” means:

“The term appropriately vetted means, with respect to elements of the Syrian opposition and other Syrian groups and individuals, at a minimum, assessments of such elements, groups, and individuals for associations with terrorist groups, Shia militias aligned with or supporting the Government of Syria, and groups associated with the Government of Iran. Such groups include, but are not limited to, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Jabhat al Nusrah, Ahrar al Sham, other al-Qaeda related groups, and Hezbollah.”

Now of course, the references to Shia groups associated with Iran, Hezbollah etc are just fluff, since this is a resolution on “vetting” members of the Syrian opposition. Hezbollah is works for the regime, so is irrelevant to this resolution. But if “vetting” is to check if any “elements, groups, individuals” have any “associations” not only with ISIS, but also with Jabhat al-Nusra, and even Ahrar al-Sham, then the resolution effectively wipes out 90 percent, if not more of the FSA and of the Syrian opposition as a whole. Since they all actively cooperate with Jabhat al-Nusra on the ground against both the regime and ISIS, and even more so with Ahrar al-Sham, whose leadership was just wiped out by a regime- or ISIS-bombing.

By ruling out any “group” that has had any “association” with JaN and even with AaS, the US ensures its Sawha operation will remain with a very small group (perhaps even the proposed 5000, out of some 60,000 FSA fighters alone, cannot be reached) – always the intention anyway – so people should not confuse this with “training the FSA” and they should not confuse the US term “vetted” or the US use of the term “moderate” with “secular’ and “non-Islamist” as a whole – these few thousand will be secular/non-Islamist, but they will also be the most subservient – basically those who agree to fight only ISIS and leave the war on the regime till the future: the exact opposite of the priorities of the 95% that won’t be trained for Sawha.

Former US ambassador Robert Ford explained this more clearly than usual recently: “One prominent American observer says it is folly to think that we can aid the moderate armed fighters to topple al-Assad. But toppling wasn’t our goal before and shouldn’t be now.” Certainly, extra arms can help the opposition “put pressure” on Assad to form a “new” expanded government, like just happened in Iraq, whose first aim would be to expel ISIS from Syria, so therefore “as we boost aid to the moderate armed rebels, we must condition that help on their reaching out to disaffected regime supporters and developing with them a common political stance for a new, negotiated national unity government, **with or without al-Assad**” (my emphasis) (http://us.cnn.com/2014/08/26/opinion/ford-isis-syria/index.html?sr=sharebar_twitter).

In other words, while Obama long ago called on Assad to “step down” (this is the sole basis on which leftists imagine Obama called for “regime change”) in order to preserve his regime and state in a “Yemeni solution,” Ford is here making clear that if it could be negotiated, a “national unity government” would be fine even *with* Assad.

But who can replace ISIS? Assad can’t.

However, the US knows that it can not simply be Assad’s airforce. The US aim now seems to be to further eviscerate the revolution, in a number of different ways as explained. However, the question of who will replace ISIS on the ground if the US really wants to wipe it out – let alone if it also wants to wipe out Nusra – remains. Quite simply, in neither Syria nor in Iraq can ISIS be replaced by non-Sunni forces, still less by muderously anti-Sunni regimes. Some kind of Sunni forces will be necessary, just as the US needed to arm the Iraqi Sunni tribes in their “Sawha” against al-Qaida in Iraq in 2007-8.

The Kurds have been valiant fighters against ISIS, but in defending their own Kurdish turf; only Sunni Arabs can replace ISIS on the ground among their Sunni base that they now control.

The act of replacing the descredited Shiite chauvinist Maliki in Iraq before beginning to bomb ISIS was necessary façade; yet Maliki has been replaced by another member of his own party, only slighly less sectarian, with the hope that this may win over some Sunnis. So far, there has been little success; and fighting ISIS with Shiite sectarian militias simply consolidates Sunnis behind ISIS, including those who previously fought it.

What hope is there then in Syria, where the Assad regime has been far more murderous than Maliki, has wiped entire Sunni towns and cities off the map and sent millions into exile? While the US now acts as Assad’s airforce to help smash the revolution, a stabilisation of the situation will eventually require the long-term US aim of doing some deal that encourages Assad and a narrow circle around him to “step down” in order to save the Baathist regime and its military-security apparatus, and to “widen” it by allowing in some select conservative opponents into the regime. The so-called ‘Yemeni solution.’ The difficulty being that the Assad ruling family and mega-capitalist clique is so much more completely associated with the state than a mere Saleh or Mubarak ever was.

Is an attempt to crush the revolution for the regime a prelude to a plan with regime insiders and international factors to gently push Assad aside when it’s over to gain a modicum of Sunni support to replace ISIS on the ground? Like everything else, this remains to be seen, but is one of the possibilities – as is the possibility that the crushing of the revolution simply means the current regime becomes the “factor of stability” in the region.

On August 10, the writer Shamus Cooke penned an article, “How ISIS finally became Obama’s enemy” (http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/08/10/how-isis-finally-became-obamas-enemy).

Cooke writes: “Suddenly the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has become a threat worthy of American missiles. For almost two years President Obama completely ignored the biggest and most brutal terror group in the Middle East, allowing it to balloon into a regional power. No matter how many heads it severed or how much territory it conquered, ISIS just couldn’t draw Obama’s attention.” Claiming that as the ISIS threat grew, “Obama ignored it, and so did the U.S. media,” concentrating instead on the Ukraine and Gaza.

At times it is difficult to work out what all this “ignoring” and “allowing” means. It could be interpreted from a number of perspectives. It could mean, perhaps, that unlike George Bush, who had the army in Iraq fighting ISIS’s predecessor, Al-Qaida in Iraq, Obama has withdrawn, chickened out, thus “allowing” ISIS to do all this. About time he started bombing Iraq again.

Or it could mean that till now, the US did not see ISIS as an enemy, it perhaps even saw it as an ally of sorts, but circumstances have changed, and when US interests are threatened, we often see a rapid change of heart among US leaders. That may or may not be, as we will discuss below, but that ought not be confused with either “ignoring” or “allowing.”

I don’t know what Cooke has been reading, but I have seen so many articles about the threat of jihadists, mainly Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria and ISIS in both Syria and Iraq, in the US and western media that it has been clear for quite some time that they are seen as the main enemy of the US in the region. I don’t have time to do a list (which in any case would be prohibitively long), though I have plenty of references in some of my articles, such as here https://mkaradjis.wordpress.com/2014/06/25/iraq-and-syria-the-struggle-against-the-multi-sided-counterrevolution/ and here https://mkaradjis.wordpress.com/2013/12/04/the-us-iran-russia-syria-and-the-geopolitical-shift-anything-for-the-regions-oppressed/ for example. And that’s not just the media, because these media reports are full of statements by US politicians.

So if it is entirely untrue that either Obama or the US media “completely ignored” ISIS, does Cooke simply mean that Obama hadn’t bombed ISIS till now? OK, this is true. But we assume Cooke, as a good anti-imperialist, opposes US bombing ISIS. So he is not necessarily criticising the US for not bombing ISIS, he is just saying that the lack of bombing, till now, is evidence that the US did not see ISIS as a problem, despite what US leaders and media were screaming about – because if they really did see ISIS as a problem, they would have bombed it long ago. I hope I have that right.

In that case, we can apply the same to the regime of Assad in Syria, right? Despite occasional rhetoric, the US and western powers have “completely ignored” the genocide that the Assad regime has been imposing on Syria the last 3 years, has “allowed” it all to happen, as a regime levelled every city in the country, turned the country into a giant moonscape, killed upwards of 100,000 people, turned 9 million people into refugees, gassed hundreds of sleeping children with chemical weapons, barrel-bombed Aleppo into oblivion, turned Homs into Hiroshima, tortured tens of thousands to death. None of this was worth a single air strike, evidence that Obama and his ruling class have completely ignored this situation and allowed it to happen.

Actually, that statement would be more correct than what Cooke says about ISIS. But even if one disagrees, since for Cooke the measure is whether or not you get bombed, then presumably he would now agree that, since the US is bombing ISIS but not Assad, the US sees ISIS as a far more serious threat or enemy than its sees Assad.

OK, so now we’re getting somewhere. Or are we?

As we read on, we see that we aren’t. Cooke then writes:

“For well over two years ISIS and other al-Qaeda-style groups have been the main driving force in the Syrian war that has claimed over 170,000 lives, with millions made refugees.”

Shameless Cooke is scabbing on the Syrian people and their 3-year uprising with this statement of breathtaking ignorance. Well, it would be ignorance if I believed that Cooke didn’t know better. It is the fact that he almost certainly does know better that is the problem with such extraordinarily dishonest statements.

Anyone who actually knows anything about Syria knows that the Free Syrian Army, a variety of moderate Islamist militias, the Islamic Front and even Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian al-Qaida, have been at war with ISIS for at least a year. No supporters of the Syrian revolution view ISIS as having anything to do with their uprising against Assad’s tyranny; all of them regard ISIS as the other enemy alongside the regime.

Actually, most believe either that the regime and ISIS actively collaborate, or even that they are secretly allied; whether or not this is true, it is certainly true that the regime and ISIS have barely fired a shot at each other for the past year, and the only force in the region, apart from the Syrian Kurds, who have actually been fighting ISIS have been the FSA and its allies.

These are the same forces that have led and continue to lead the mass uprising against Assad’s fascist tyranny. They have been the “driving force” in the revolt against the regime, not ISIS. In the entire southern front, there is virtually no ISIS. In the Homs, Hama, Idlib northwest front there is virtually no ISIS. In Aleppo city there is no ISIS. ISIS has focused on conquering already liberated zones from the Syrian resistance, and has had most success in the northeast, along the Iraqi border, and some of the northern countryside of Aleppo province.

By late 2013, ISIS had conquered more regions of Aleppo and Idlib, but in January this year, as everyone who actually reads knows very well, the FSA (which had already declared war on ISIS last August) was joined by a moderate Islamist coalition, the Mujahideen Army, and by the Islamic Front (which groups together some moderate to harder Islamist groups), and, a little later, Jabhat al-Nusra, in a nation-wide coordinated attack on ISIS, which drove it completely out of Idlib and Hama and large sections of Aleppo province, Deir-Azour, Raqqa and elsewhere. ISIS made a comeback in Raqqa despite furious resistance, and since then has been laying siege to Deir-Azour.

In the weeks leading up to ISIS’ seizure of Mosul, the Syrian rebel alliance waged a furious resistance attempting to keep hold of Deir-Azour, the only non-ISIS or non-Kurdish controlled part of the northeast, against a sustained ISIS siege. While the rebels fought ISIS, Assad helped ISIS by terror bombing the city (http://syriadirect.org/main/36-interviews/1448-isis-regime-close-in-on-deir-e-zor-rebels), in effect, a joint siege; and after ISIS murdered 3 FSA commanders in Deir-Azour in June, regime warplanes bombed the FSA mourning tent, killing 16 people (http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/2014/06/21/ISIS-executes-three-Syrian-rebel-officers.html).
The rebels put out a call to the world for arms, or otherwise they would have to abandon the city. As with the last 3 years, they were ignored and got nothing from the US or the West; ISIS took the city. Since then, there has already been another uprising in Deir-Azour against ISIS, which the latter suppressed.

If Cooke was pointing out that this blatant betrayal of the Syrian rebels as they resisted ISIS was evidence of US acquiescence with ISIS, he would be right in this sense. As against the forces of the Syrian revolution, yes, the US acquiesces with ISIS just as the Assad regime does. That is because in relation to revolution, the US, the Assad regime and ISIS are all on the side of counterrevolution, regardless of whether or not they love each other otherwise.

But Cooke is not saying that at all. On the contrary, by identifying ISIS with the Syrian uprising against Assad, by calling it the “driving force” in the Syrian war against the regime, Cooke is not just echoing Assadist propaganda, he is also slandering the entire cast of Syrian rebel organisations, all of whom have shed rivers of blood to drive ISIS out of as much of Syria as possible, to ensure the liberation from one form of tyranny does not bequeath another, all the time being bombed from the skies by the fascist regime while doing so.

It is interesting that in falsely claiming ISIS was the “driving force” of the revolution, he notes that this war “has claimed over 170,000 lives, with millions made refugees.” While he doesn’t say who is mostly responsible for these 170,000 lives and 9 million refugees, his implication is that it is those who have “spearheaded” the revolt, whether ISIS or all the actual anti-Assad rebels who he pretends are the same thing. So apparently it is not a regime that has bombed the whole country to bits with a vast array of conventional weapons of mass destruction that killed all those people, it is the people with few arms trying to overthrow the regime that are responsible.

Cooke of course rightly supports the Palestinian people in their struggle against the Zionist regime’s savage occupation and constant mass murder, yet if he applied the same standards he should be blaming the lightly-armed Palestinian resistance for destroying Gaza rather than the regime that actually does the destroying.

It is strange that Cooke quotes a number of people, including Patrick Cockburn, claiming that the US and West showed little alarm even after ISIS took Mosul, the New York Times claiming that “the president expressed no enthusiasm for American military action,” with Cooke adding “or any action for that matter.”

Right, so just because every western politician and media source jumped on the conquest of Mosul and made it a top international issue, and the US immediately moved the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush, its air wing, the cruiser USS Philippine Sea and destroyer USS Truxton towards the Gulf, and on June 20 Obama announced that 300 “special forces members” would be sent to Iraq to “train and advise the Iraqi security forces” (on top of 160 troops which were already in Iraq, including 50 marines and more than 100 soldiers) and threatened “targeted” air strikes against the Sunni militia (http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/obama-flags-targeted-action-in-iraq/story-fnb64oi6-1226960737639?from=public_rss), all this is doing “nothing at all” because Obama didn’t immediately launch massive air strikes on ISIS.

Anyone would think that after invading Iraq, destroying the country, being humiliated by the level of failure, finally withdrawing with the overwhelming majority of Americans and people around the world opposed to the US intervention and glad they were finally out, that it is hardly surprising that Obama didn’t order full-scale massive US intervention the day after Mosul was taken. That moving warships and special forces into Iraq might already be a big deal in the circumstances. That launching air strikes inside Iraq within 2 months of the latest crisis breaking out is in fact relatively rapid.

Not for Cooke – massive air strikes the next day, anything less proves Obama is doing nothing and even “allowing” ISIS to do all this!

OK, so let’s do a comparison. ISIS takes Mosul in June 2014, and Obama launches air strikes in August. The Assad regime begins slaughtering peaceful protestors en-masse in March 2011, for months and months until they finally take up arms, then by late 2011-early 2012 Assad is already destroying Homs with massive quantities of sophisticated weaponry and by mid-2012 the regime is basically using its air force, long-range missiles, barrel-bombs etc on a daily basis, and after 3.5 years Obama hasn’t launched a sausage at the regime.

I’ll let Cooke draw his conclusions from that.

Oh, but no, he doesn’t; it just gets worse:

“For example, after Obama publicly targeted the Syrian government for destruction he had no qualms about using ISIS and the other al-Qaeda-linked groups as proxies in the fight.”

Really? Firstly, the claim that Obama “targeted the Syrian regime for destruction” is just so much waffle. The Syrian people rose against the regime; Assad slaughtered them; after months and months of this Obama started trying to get Assad to exit via a “Yemeni” solution that saved the regime via a cosmetic change at the very top. If the US had targeted the regime for destruction, it would have actually done something about it, not simply mouthed platitudes about how terrible the regime was, which anyone with a brain could see.

Oh, but Cooke says the US did that – it used ISIS and other al-Qaida groups as proxies to fight Assad. Of course, the US did nothing of the sort. Cooke offers not a shred of evidence for this outlandish claim, and nor would he find any if he tried. It seems that when you write Assadista crap, you don’t need to, but Cooke is hardly alone in this.

The US never sent any arms to the secular FSA, or the moderate Islamists, or Islamic Front, or Jabhat al-Nusra, or ISIS. The only way we can say the US encouraged ISIS was precisely by not arming the FSA, because ISIS could get plenty of money and arms across the Iraq border anyway, so in comparison with the FSA, which mainly relied on weapons captured or made in back-yards, ISIS was much better armed.

Cooke claims that:

“These terror groups were encouraged to grow exponentially in their fight against al-Assad, with Obama knowing full well that Saudi Arabia and other U.S. allied Gulf States were sending mountains of money, guns, and fighters to the jihadists.”

Lies. But why do I have to prove what Cooke doesn’t even attempt to show? He will find no evidence of such nonsense. Saudi Arabia and the al-Qaida franchises regard each other to be arch-enemies, as anyone with a clue about the Middle East knows. That is aside from the fact that even if the Saudis and Gulf had been arming them, that would not prove much about the US; anyone looking would see the very constant US pressure on the Gulf to not arm any Islamists in Syria, no matter how moderate, in fact even to not arm the FSA. Here is some information: https://mkaradjis.wordpress.com/2014/06/03/the-gulf-and-islamism-in-syria-myths-and-misconceptions/

Cooke goes on:

“There was simply was no one else effectively fighting al-Assad, a dynamic that has artificially lengthened a war that would have ended years ago, while creating the environment that ISIS thrived in.”

Lies. It was every other group, rather than ISIS, that was fighting Assad. Then they had to fight ISIS too. If western or Gulf arming of the rebels “artificially lengthened a war that would have ended years ago” then indeed it would have ended years ago, given the large amount of nothing very much the rebels have received, especially in relation to the gigantic arsenal of heavy weaponry possessed by the regime. Actually ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra became “more effective” precisely due to the lack of arms in the hands of the FSA. Funny how “leftists” think uprisings against dictatorships should properly be “ended” unless someone outside is allegedly arming them; apparently the peace of the grave is the preferred situation for the likes of Cooke.

But it gets worse:

“Much of the money and guns that Obama shipped to the “moderate” Islamists rebels of course found its way into the hands of the jihadists, since thousands of moderates have since joined ISIS.”

First, which “guns” did Obama ship to “moderate Islamist rebels”? I know of none. In fact I know of virtually none even to moderate secular rebels, let alone “moderate Islamists” that Cooke assumes to be everyone who is not al-Qaida. There have been a few US weapons this year since April, in the hands of one single, smallish, very secular rebel group, Hazm Hazara, a new group. Certainly none of its small handful of US arms have gone to the jihadists, despite the confident “of course” by Cooke. You see Cooke knows – you can’t trust these Arabs – give a gun to an Arab moderate, he’ll give it to a jihadist. Of course. Evidence is superfluous. Hazm’s US arms are so few they are not enough for Hazm; and apart from the fact that Hazm is part of the joint rebel war on ISIS, it is also the group least likely to collaborate operationally even with Jabhat al-Nusra – indeed, precisely the reason the US decided to slip it a few arms, in its long-term search for some section of the FSA to become a Sawha movement to fight the jihadists rather than Assad. A quest which to date has been unsuccessful.

Let’s just compare Cooke’s evidence-free assertions about US arms to Syrian rebels and US-backed Saudi arms to ISIS to what he says about US arms to the Maliki regime in Iraq:

“When ISIS invaded Iraq from Syria, Obama barely batted an eyelash, making excuse after excuse about why the U.S. couldn’t send the Iraqi government military equipment to fight ISIS.”

Now, leaving aside the actual intervention with warships and special forces noted above, isn’t it strange that Cooke has managed to not notice that “since January, the Pentagon has been expediting sales of Hellfire air-to-ground missiles, anti-tank rounds, small arms and ammunition, under the Foreign Military Sales program. Approximately 800 Hellfire missiles, which can be loaded onto the small Beechcraft and Cessna planes the Iraqi security forces possess, have been delivered since January, with 5,000 of them authorized for sale” (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/12/iraq-us-arms-weapons-isis-new-government), not to mention all the tanks, Humvees, helicopters etc previously delivered – everyone and their dog has noted the heavy weapons windfall gained by ISIS when it took Mosul from the Iraqi army – only Cooke doesn’t know that these weapons were from the US. This is all open, above board, no secret – but all this arming of the sectarian regime in Iraq was not enough for Cooke, if the US didn’t provide it with nuclear weapons that proves the US supported ISIS, whereas all the imaginary weaponry that the US was in his opinion supplying Syrian rebels was too much, even if in fact it was only radios, night goggles, water filters and ready-meals.

Cooke finishes: “Gazans are allowed to be slaughtered, Syrian’s massacred, and half of Iraq torn to shreds while Obama has busied himself with making threats to Russia.”

The note about US and western hypocrisy is of course something we all agree on, especially in relation to the US total and absolute support for the savage Zionist entity occupying Palestine. Yet there is something deeply ironic about his statement that Syrians can be “massacred” without the US giving a stuff – because it is absolutely true. The US, like Cooke and many other leftists, are quite happy to watch the regime of Bashar Assad slaughter Syrians for years. The US, and Israel, know very well that the Syrian and Palestinian Intifadas are one, that a victory against a fascist tyranny in an Arab country is a victory for the peoples of the region, which can only boost the struggle of the Palestinians.

But that’s if you understand class, and not some abstract, meaningless, purely rhetorical, without-substance “anti-imperialism” so popular in parts of the left these days – a quality they mistakenly identify with a regime in Damascus that has collaborated with imperialism right through its career

by Michael Karadjis

As a coalition of Sunni-based forces, including the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (ISIS), took the major northern Iraqi city of Mosul and then most of the Sunni heartland in the north and west of Iraq, regional and western capitals went into crisis mode: the entire post-US occupation stabilisation had collapsed in a heap.

And the coalition leading this revolt consists of none other than the same forces which led the Iraqi resistance to US occupation throughout the middle years of the last decade. Yes, once again the arch-reactionary ISIS itself has revealed its brutality, with reported mass killing of captured soldiers, a crime against humanity; in the same way that monstrous acts, such as bombing work queues and Shiite mosques, were carried out during the anti-US resistance by al-Qaida in Iraq (ie, what became ISIS); horrific repression is partly to blame for breeding horrific reactions. In both cases however, this most violent and irrational element does not define the movement, still less explain its strength.

These events involve both Syria and Iraq, with their long, relatively open, border occupied on both sides by ISIS. The rise of ISIS can be connected to two momentous events: the American Guernica on Iraq 2003-2008, and the vast multi-sided Iraqi resistance to that invasion and occupation; and the vast popular revolution in Syria, and the Assad regime’s Guernica to suppress it over 2011-2014. In both cases, the victims have been overwhelmingly Iraqi and Syrian Sunni Arabs – the vast Sunni majority in Syria, and the significant Sunni minority in Iraq.

It is in the context of this overwhelming disaster faced by the Sunni masses of Syria and Iraq, and mass resistance to it, that ISIS has been able to grow, representing the most extreme and most sectarian reaction to this dual blitzkrieg.

Iraq and Syria: the forces ranged against both regimes and ISIS

It is important to understand, however, that in neither Syria nor Iraq is ISIS the only opposition, among the disenfranchised Sunni masses, and the popular masses more generally, to the sectarian-based capitalist regimes in power. While the media focus has been about “regime(s) versus ISIS,” in reality, in both countries, there are three main forces in contention:

1. The Bashar al-Assad and Nuri al-Maliki regimes. Both are sectarian-based regimes: the Assad regime is a “secular” totalitarian regime heavily based among the elite of the Alawite religious minority; the Maliki regime is a sectarian, semi-theocratic, Shiite regime closely aligned with both the former US occupier, that facilitated its rise to power, and with the Shiite theocracy in neighbouring Iran.

2. The Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (ISIS), the most extreme Sunni sectarian and theocratic movement in the region, which has set up its own semi-state over parts of Syria and Iraq. A descendant of al-Qaida in Iraq, ISIS was disowned by al-Qaida last year for being unnecessarily and embarrassingly barbaric (though in fact the disagreement went back as far as 2005). It represents an “opposing counterrevolution,” formed partially from within the ranks of the uprisings.

3. In between, a vast opposition to the regimes which is also distinct from ISIS, in open war with it in Syria, and on and off at war with it in Iraq:

In Iraq, this consists of a range of “Sunni tribes” and other Sunni militias which have, over the last year or so, alternatively been fighting the regime alongside ISIS, or fighting against ISIS. This includes Sunni militia that were part of the Iraqi resistance to US occupation, whether pro-Saddam Baathist, Islamist or otherwise nationalist; and Sunni groups that were mobilised by the US and Saudi Arabia into the “Sawha” (Awakening) movement that helped defeat al-Qaida in 2007-8, but have since become disenchanted with the Shiite sectarian regime they had been drawn into propping up.

In Syria, this consists of all the armed manifestations of the Syrian revolution, from the secular Free Syrian Army (FSA, based heavily among the Sunni but not entirely, including some Alawite and Christian brigades and officers), moderate Islamist groups like the Mujahideen Army in the north and the al-Ajnad Union in the south, the Islamic Front, a loose coalition ranging from moderate to hard-line Islamists, and Jabhat al-Nusra (JaN), the official wing of al-Qaida in Syria, which however is markedly less hard-line than ISIS since their split in May 2013. While a favourite western media discourse is “rebel in-fighting,” in reality this does not exist at all; rather, all these forces act in unison in their war against both the Assad regime and ISIS; it is the war of all of them against ISIS that wrongly gets labelled this way.

These two struggles are related but different. The Syrian struggle began as a multi—sect democratic uprising which however has tended to become more Sunni in composition largely due to the class realities in Syrian society; the Iraqi struggle is explicitly Sunni against an explicitly Shiite-sectarian regime, and evolved out of a nationalist resistance to US occupation. The more advanced sectors of the Syrian revolution still hope to win non-Sunni support for a rising against then regime, no matter how unlikely that may now be; by contrast, the Iraqi revolt only aims to liberate Sunni regions – the ISIS-led attempt to conquer Shiite-dominated Baghdad or any other Shiite region would by definition by a reactionary and sectarian action.

What accounts for strength of ISIS?

What then accounts for the particular strength of ISIS, given that most accounts do not credit ISIS with superior numbers of troops to other resistance movements (indeed in Syria at least ISIS is vastly outnumbered, perhaps 10 to 1, yet in the second half of 2013 had taken control over much rebel-held territory before being expelled in January 2014)?

One simple explanation is that the extraordinary level of barbarism of the Syrian regime, and of the previous US occupation of Iraq, alongside the growing sectarianism and brutality of the current Iraqi regime, will naturally produce an extremist and sectarian mirror within the opposition. This is certainly valid, yet does not entirely explain why the most brutal and extremist force appears so visibly powerful.

Another important factor is the simple fact that it controls regions of both countries that straddle their long border – when weakened on one side, it can retreat to the other side. When it builds up semi-state infrastructure when strong on one side, this can be used on the other side of the border. This gives ISIS simple practical strength.

Why ISIS just happens to control these regions would seem to be related to them being relatively economically backward, sparsely populated and partly “tribal” regions, in northeast Syria and northwest Iraq, where its unifying presence has brought a degree of security and some social services to otherwise forgotten regions. In contrast, the allied forces of the Syrian revolution, in one form or another, control liberated regions in the more developed and populous south, north-west and scattered parts of the centre, with their base among the peasantry and the urban poor in impoverished regional towns and ringed around major cities.

Importantly, however, these backward regions ISIS controls do have resources, including oil, which has greatly boosted ISIS funds, partly via oil deals with the Assad regime.

Then there is the question of funding. As the descendant of al-Qaida in Iraq, ISIS has been the recipient of significant funding from sections of the Gulf bourgeoisie long sympathetic to al-Qaida. Not the Gulf regimes, as is often brandished about with no evidence (supporters of the Syrian and Iranian regimes tend to use “Saudi Arabia” as a form of demonology and thus falsely attribute Saudi support to whoever they dislike); on the contrary, al-Qaida views the Gulf regimes as arch-apostates and seeks their overthrow. However, the anti-regime Gulf bourgeoisie is very powerful – they oppose these narrow monarchical regimes which “lock out” the majority of the bourgeoisie from political power; the US backing of these regimes, and the regimes’ subservience to US imperialism, has produced a fierce anti-imperialism among this oppositional bourgeoisie, no matter how regressive the form it takes. In this sense, the question of why ISIS is particularly powerful is no more or less complicated than why al-Qaida became powerful enough to attack New York.

Then there’s the role of the Syrian and Iraqi Baath, in quite different ways. The Alawi-led, “secular” Syrian tyranny may appear to be an obvious enemy of ISIS’ theocratic semi-state; however, they have a common interest in crushing the Syrian revolution, which is a threat to both due to its liberatory message; and its forces also happen to control regions geographically in between Assad- and ISIS-controlled regions, so there is a practical aspect to Assad-ISIS collaboration. Speculation about this underhanded collaboration between the two centres of reaction in Syria is therefore widespread, the oil deals being only the most pragmatic part.

At the very least, the Assad regime’s past collaboration of with Iraqi jihadists is well-established. Initially after 9/11, the Assad regime collaborated with the CIA in “renditioning” and torturing “terror” suspects for the US as part of the US ‘war on terror” from 2001 to 2003. However, when the crazed Bush regime refused to reciprocate, by the mid-2000s Assad was encouraging Syrian jihadists to go to Iraq to help (or help undermine) the Iraqi resistance, partly to get them off his back in Syria, while placing obstacles in the path of the more crazed wing of US neocons who fantasised about taking their “success” in Iraq into Syria (http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n07/peter-neumann/suspects-into-collaborators). This policy was later reversed again after 2007 and Syria returned to the US “rendition” program between 2008 and 2011 after Obama came to power and US-Syrian relations improved. At this point, prominent Syrian jihadist and former key link to al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu al-Qaqaa, “was shot dead in mysterious circumstances” and “his funeral was attended by members of the Syrian parliament along with thousands of Islamists” (ibid).

However, after the outbreak of revolution in 2011, Assad again changed course, this time not related to Iraq however. The regime released hundreds of jihadists just as it was arresting thousands of democratic oppositionists – a clear ploy to undercut the democratic revolution and “sectarianise” the struggle. The fact that the Assad regime, and ISIS in Syria, hardly fight each other, but both fight the rebel coalition, is well-established: the regime can bomb schools, market-places, hospitals, refugee camps, entire cities to rubble; but ISIS headquarters in Raqqa stood proudly untouched by regime warplanes right up to a few days ago, looking like this: http://imgur.com/r/syriancivilwar/ZfTLX0G. The governor of Iraq’s Ninevah province, Ethyl Najafi, even claimed the Syrian regime had helped ISIS take over Mosul (http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/iraqs-nineveh-governor-syria-helped-isil-seize-mosul/1700451185).

The role of the Iraqi Baath is different; unlike its Syrian counterpart, it is on the same “Sunni” side of the “sectarian” divide. Some of ISIS’s (ie, al-Qaida in Iraq’s) initial core came from the “Islamification” of some of Saddam Hussein’s former military officer corps during the resistance to US occupation; three of six top ISIS leaders were such “converts” (http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/2014/02/13/Exclusive-Top-ISIS-leaders-revealed.html). This layer of former Baathists brought with them arms, skills, intelligence etc, a formidable backbone to the new jihadist group. Importantly however, this should be distinguished from the Baathist influence among some of the non-ISIS Sunni forces fighting today in Iraq, which have collaborated with ISIS to defeat Maliki but are already coming into conflict with it.

A Sunni uprising against a sectarian regime

It has become increasingly clear that the initial reports of an ISIS takeover of Mosul and the north were far too simplistic, though ISIS may be taking the lead role in places. It is now clear that the other Sunni-based militia throughout the region had had a gutful of Maliki’s sectarian repression and decided to temporarily throw their lot in with ISIS to drive the “Iraqi army,” which they viewed as an occupation army, out of the Sunni majority regions. While the purpose of this article is not to detail this, this reality has been widely exposed; crucial background on Maliki’s sectarian repression and Sunni resistance can be found here for example: http://mideastafrica.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2014/01/15/maliki_s_anbar_blunder. Indeed, regarding Mosul in particular, it is a stunning fact that the Maliki regime placed a known Shiite torturer and war criminal, General Mahdi Al Gharawi, in charge of this largest of Sunni cities; his actions were so brutal that even the US occupation regime and the Iraqi courts themselves had tried to prosecute him last decade
(http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/19/iraq-put-a-death-squad-commander-and-torturer-in-charge-of-mosul-no-wonder-isis-is-winning.html).

Other Sunni-based movements involved in the uprising alongside ISIS include the Sufi-Baathist Army of the Men of the Naqshbandi Order (JRTN), which includes many former officers of Saddam Hussein’s army; a variety of other Islamist or nationalist militias, including the Muslim Scholars Association/1920 Revolution Brigades, the Islamic Army (apparently MB-connected), the Rashidin Army, the Iraqi Hamas, the Mujahidin Shura Council, and the al-Qaeda-originated Ansar al-Islam; various Sunni tribal councils, including those such as the Anbar Tribal Council which had been part of the US-backed “Sawha” movement but have since become disaffected due to Maliki’s sectarian rule; and new groups emerging from the protest movement of the last year or so who have taken up arms to defend their movement against the regime’s repression. Some of these forces have formed various shifting coalitions.

On the one hand, many who initially fled Mosul have returned, and have expressed a preference for even ISIS over the Maliki regime (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/13/world/middleeast/iraqis-fled-mosul-for-home-after-militant-group-swarmed-the-city.html?_r=2). Many claimed their initial flight was due to fear of being bombed by the regime, as it had previously copied the US occupiers by again bombing Falluja. In contrast to its barbarity in Syria, where ISIS is in many ways seen as a foreign invasion, some reports suggested that ISIS in Iraq, where it has a real local base, was acting in a more mild way towards its Sunni constituents (http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/the-isis-guide-to-building-an-islamic-state/372769); in any case, as its current drive against the regime depends on preserving, at least for the moment, its support among Sunni and its alliance with non-ISIS forces, it is likely to temper its repression for the moment. On the other hand, the breathtaking barbarity shown in the apparent mass slaughter of regime soldiers indicates that ISIS is still ISIS, and those forces in a temporary bloc with ISIS will have to confront it quite soon to avoid simply falling into a sectarian quagmire.

This dual process led to understandable speculation about the rapid collapse of Maliki’s “Iraqi Army” in Mosul. The relative openness of the Assad-ISIS collaboration, the concurrent ability of Assad, Maliki and Iran to use the bogey of ISIS to demonise all opposition to the two sectarian regimes, and the continual refrain of US and other western leaders for years that they couldn’t send even a bullet to the Syrian liberation struggle because such arms might get into the hands of al-Qaida, and the growing US chorus for military action against al-Qaida in Syria, led to an understandable conspiracy theory: Maliki had ordered his army to run away and leave Mosul to the tender mercies of ISIS, in order to goad the US into launching air strikes “against ISIS” in Iraq and Syria, ie, against the Sunni-based uprisings as a whole. Scot Lucas more or less implies this here: http://eaworldview.com/2014/06/iraq-special-al-maliki-government-abandon-mosul.

While not every conspiracy theory is always false, it appears most likely that reality was far more simple: the part of Maliki’s armed forces that were sectarian-based knew it would be pointless putting up any fight against the united Sunni insurgency in the overwhelmingly Sunni regions in the north; and to the extent that conscripts were Sunni, they downed arms and joined their brothers and sisters.

This temporary Sunni coalition is unlikely to last; tensions have been there from the start, and as ISIS tries to impose its medievalist theocratic repression on its current supporters, these tensions are bound to spread. Former General Muzhir al Qaisi, from “the General Military Council of the Iraqi Revolutionaries” – apparently one of the coalitions – which entered Mosul alongside ISIS, told the BBC’s Jim Muir that they were bigger than ISIS, and that, moreover, he considered ISIS to be “barbarians” (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-27853362). Violent clashes have already broken out in some regions in the north between ISIS and the Baathist Naqshbandis (http://iswiraq.blogspot.com.au/2014/06/iraq-situation-report-june-21st-2014.html), while in other areas, local Sunni forces liberated themselves from Maliki regime occupation without ISIS and have declared they will fight off anyone from outside, including ISIS, trying to take over.

US-Iranian intervention?

Both the US and Iran have threatened intervention to shore up Maliki’s tottering regime and beat back the Sunni uprising, under the guise of defeating ISIS terror. Iran has already sent in units of the Qods Force, a wing of the Revolutionary Guards, under its veteran commander Qassem Suleimani; there are reports of up to 500 of these militia in Iraq, and even possibly of 1500 paramilitary Basij militiamen arriving (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/14/iran-iraq-isis-fight-militants-nouri-maliki). Meanwhile, the US has moved the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush, its air wing, the cruiser USS Philippine Sea and destroyer USS Truxton towards the Gulf, while on June 20 Obama announced that 300 “special forces members” would be sent to Iraq to “train and advise the Iraqi security forces” (on top of 160 troops which are already in Iraq, including 50 marines and more than 100 soldiers) and threatened “targeted” air strikes against the Sunni militia (http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/obama-flags-targeted-action-in-iraq/story-fnb64oi6-1226960737639?from=public_rss).
Despite their poor relations with one another, both the US and Iran have expressed the view that they need to cooperate against a common foe here. Last week, Obama said Iran can play a constructive role in Iraq (http://news.yahoo.com/obama-says-iran-play-constructive-role-iraq-181433736.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter), and US and Iranian officials met on the sidelines of nuclear talks to discuss Iraq. Iranian president Hassan Rouhani likewise said that Iran would “not rule out” working with the US on Iraq, while his deputy, Hamid Aboutalebi, said “Iran and the US are the only countries who can manage the Iraq crisis” (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/16/world/middleeast/republicans-press-obama-to-move-swiftly-to-halt-extremists-advances-in-iraq.html?hp&_r=0).

Iranian deputy foreign minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian even went so far as to claim the US “lacks serious will for confronting terrorism in Iraq and the region” due to the US “delay” in fighting terrorism and Obama’s remarks which only promised hundreds of advisors rather than immediate air strikes (http://news.yahoo.com/iran-says-obama-remarks-show-us-not-serious-173636523.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter).

In reality, this is not as new as it sounds, certainly not in Iraq and not even in Syria. From late last year, more and more US leaders and former leaders began deluging the media with hints that Assad remaining was preferable to the alternative, and that Iran could play a positive role in Syria – in both cases focusing on the threat posed by the Sunni jihadists (I documented some of this process, and the geopolitical turn in US policy it entailed, here: https://mkaradjis.wordpress.com/2013/12/04/the-us-iran-russia-syria-and-the-geopolitical-shift-anything-for-the-regions-oppressed/).

Not surprisingly, the Syrian regime has also expressed solidarity with Maliki and offered to jointly fight ISIS. Then on June 15, the Syrian regime launched its most major strikes on ISIS in Syria for many months, if not ever, the regime even destroying ISIS headquarters in Hasakah. As if they didn’t know it was there before. Clearly, for Assad, it is time to try to cash in; ISIS has been a useful ally against the Syrian revolution, but as with Maliki and Iran, Assad also sees the value in using the horror at ISIS’s brutality to encourage the US’ geopolitical turn to continue, to hopefully again accepting Assad as a partner in the “war in terror” – as all local counterrevolutionary forces use ISIS as the bogeyman to taint the popular insurgency in both countries.

Assad has also spoken of what he sees as a shift in US policy, claiming “the United States and the West have started to send signs of change. Terrorism is now on their soil,” and therefore “current and former US officials are trying to get in touch with us, but they do not dare to because of the powerful lobbies that are pressuring them” (http://www.i24news.tv/en/news/international/middle-east/140611-assad-says-west-is-changing-position-on-syria-war?utm_campaign=NEWS+ISRAEL&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter). Assad even praised the US for being “more rational than the French” regarding Syria (http://eaworldview.com/2014/06/syria-interview-assad-praises-rational-us-celebrates-victory), a clear note of thanks for the US towering betrayal of those it claims to support.

A US “war on ISIS”: a war on the Sunni uprising

The complication is that ISIS is itself a counterrevolutionary force; in theory, if the US struck very narrowly at ISIS itself, it could boost the non-ISIS forces among the resistance in both countries. And indeed, given that the Syrian rebel alliance of the FSA and Islamist rebels that has been the only force in the region actually fighting ISIS, it might be expected that the US may decide to finally, after 3.5 years, begin providing some serious weapons to the Syrian rebels to help them defeat ISIS. Yet this appears the furthest thing from the aims of US leaders in both countries.

This is very obvious in the case of Iraq. The US has provided the Maliki regime millions of dollars worth of heavy military equipment, including Humvees (armoured vehicles), tanks, helicopters and so on. Rather than try to build bridges with the Sunni population, the regime has used its weaponry to further alienate them by launching a brutal counterinsurgency, which led directly to their current bloc with ISIS. In this context, what does the prospect of US intervention “against ISIS” in Iraq mean in practice? To examine this, it will be useful to look back at the US invasion and the rise of al-Qaida in the resistance.

Many analysts have claimed the US deliberately stoked sectarianism in Iraq after its 2003 invasion in order to divide and rule. However, while divide and rule is certainly a well-tested imperialist device, this analysis is too simplistic. It depends on the tactical needs of the moment. Sectarian division, after all, was hardly absent in Iraq under Saddam Hussein, which was based narrowly around a small section of the Sunni minority; the tyrannical regime had carried out large scale massacres of Shia, especially after the mass Shia uprising in 1991.
It is true, of course, that this sectarian division was not so strong on the ground, and that indeed, many tribes were mixed Sunni and Shia; there was nothing of the kind of sectarian warfare that characterised the period after the US invasion had destroyed the social fabric of the country.

However, the US relied precisely on the hatred the Shia majority felt for the regime as a factor that would ease its invasion to depose Hussein, and this cannot be ignored when analysing what happened next. Was it necessary for the US to stoke even more sectarianism after its invasion? Soon after the invasion, the mass resistance to US occupation centred among the Sunni population, partly because it had been a Sunni-led regime evicted from power by an imperialist invasion, and if the Hussein regime had had any base left, it would only have been among the Sunni minority. Arguably, therefore, the immediate US interest would have been to win over a section of the Sunni, and therefore to discourage sectarianism among its Shiite partners in the occupation regime.

But things went horribly wrong. First, occupation tends to create new enemies; so if the Shiite ruling bourgeois stooges were working with the occupation, happy to step in as the US evicted Hussein’s regime, the Shiite masses, especially in the slims of Sadr City in Baghdad, felt the brunt of occupiers’ everyday repression. The rise of the anti-imperialist Mahdi Army, led by Al-Sadr, represented this new popular resistance.

Second, the US occupation carried out a radical change of plan. For 12 years, the CIA and other US strategists had stressed the need to maintain the core of the Baathist regime, without Saddam and his immediate circle, as an imperialist imposed regime would still need the actually existing state apparatus of the Iraqi capitalist class to re-impose and re-stabilise capitalist rule. Yet in 2004, the US colonial proconsul ruling Iraq, Paul Bremmer, dissolved the Baathist police and armed forces and carried out a radical “de-Baathification” of the entire state apparatus.

It is hard to determine whether this was caused by a deliberate ploy to stoke further sectarianism; or by the neoconservative regime running the US getting caught up in its own “spread democracy” part of its rhetoric to the detriment of realist-based imperialist interests; or was simply due to inevitable class alignments, which then had unintended consequences.

I would argue that it was not the first of these. It is true that the de-Baathification program drove mostly Sunni out of work and onto the streets, thus intensifying Sunni opposition; and as it was a Shiite-dominated regime that carried it out, this would have boosted anti-Shia sectarianism among the Sunni. In fact, the first post-invasion job of current leader Maliki was assistant to the director of the de-Baathification program!

However, the dissolution of the Iraqi armed forces hit both Sunni and Shia working class Iraqis, thus massively boosting support for the anti-occupation Mahdi Army. As US forces imposed a Guernica-style terror on the Sunni city Falluja, al-Sadr led the Shiite poor of Badr City out on the streets in anti-sectarian solidarity with the Sunni, a stunningly opposite approach to the main pro-Iranian faction then backing the US-imposed regime, the Badr Brigades, and a challenge the occupiers were least expecting.

But whether these moves were only about crazed and unrealistic neoconservatives running amock is unclear, though it may be part of the picture. While the CIA line was theoretically perfect from a class point of view, there was a major practical problem: the simple size of the Shia majority (50-60%) compared to the Sunni minority around which the regime was based (25-30%). Those behind Bremmer’s move may have made a very logical calculation, despite the risks involved in the massive instability it would temporarily lead to: capitalist class rule would never be re-stabilised unless the capitalist class from the majority Shia population get to rule; the regime and state apparatus left over from Hussein’s eviction was far too narrow and narrowly Sunni to ever be useful.

Whatever the cause, facing the threat of a non-sectarian joint Sunni-Shia anti-occupation movement, it now may well have suited US interests to stoke sectarianism, to ensure Sunni and Shia focused on killing each other rather than targeting the occupiers. While the idea that the US would have deliberately encouraged al-Qaida in Iraq for this purpose is most likely a conspiracy theory as baseless as most, it could be said that, just temporarily, al-Qaida’s criminal sectarian attacks on Shiite mosques and holy places played directly into the hands of the US occupation regime and the most sectarian wing of the Shia elite. The US responded in like manner, arming the most bloodthirsty sectarian forces among the Shia to go after the Sunni, massacre them just as al-Qaida was doing to Shia, and ethnically cleanse them from significant regions, including most of Baghdad. While doing this, the US cracked down on the Mahdi Army. However, after some time the sectarian atmosphere also neutralised the Mahdi Army as a threat as it too got drawn into the mutual slaughter.

Significantly, al-Qaida outside of Iraq could see the disaster that al-Qaida in Iraq, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was causing. Al-Qaida head Ayman al- Zawahiri warned that the focus must be kept on defeating the US, and argued against targeting Shiite holy places and non-combatants, and against the grisly hostage killings (https://www.fas.org/irp/news/2005/10/dni101105.html). Zarqawi rejected this advice, and this difference, going back to 2005, is important in understanding the differences today between ISIS, the extremely sectarian and brutal descendant of al-Qaida in Iraq, and Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria, the official wing of al-Qaida. Some might view it as odd that the actual al-Qaida is significantly more moderate in its behaviour than the dissident ISIS but the logic is simple: Zarqawi then and ISIS now aim to build a “state” of Iraq and the Levant; their main enemy are the opposing sects, mostly Shia, that are necessarily not part of their state-building project. Al-Qaida (including al-Nusra in Syria) is by contrast still more focused on the big picture and so has a dimmer view of counterproductive sectarian bloodletting which plays into the hands of the enemy.

While Assad’s aims in facilitating the entry of Syrian jihadists into Iraq after 2003 can be explained as a mixture of keeping them off his back in Syria, and bogging down the US enough to discourage the nuttier wing of the neo-con fanatics who wanted to take their great “success” of regime change into Syria, it seems logical that the Syrian regime would have had the same use of a rise of sectarianism in Iraq at this juncture. After all, a narrow Alawi regime ruling over a vast disenchanted Sunni majority might have also seen the prospect of a joint non-sectarian Sunni-Shia struggle in Iraq as an existential threat at home.

But after a couple of years of sectarian slaughter had caused enough damage, the imperative to win a section of the Sunni away from al-Qaida in order to re-stabilise an Iraqi capitalist regime returned. In 2007, the US and Saudi Arabia, exploiting the exasperation increasingly felt by the Sunni with al-Qaida’s excessive violence, armed Sunni tribes in Anbar province into the “Sawha” (Awakening) movement, which helped defeat al-Qaida throughout most of the region, and brought a new section of Sunni leadership into supporting the Shiite-led regime. It probably helped that around this time, the Syrian regime also returned to the policy of “renditioning” jihadists for the US “war on terror.”

As has been widely reported, the current Sunni uprising, and the fact that the bulk of the Sunni population is currently in league with al-Qaida’s successor, ISIS, is due to the Maliki regime’s betrayal of the promises made to the Sawha Sunnis, their intensified exclusion from power, and the brutal repression unleashed against those who attempted to protest this situation. As such, one might say that Maliki has also let down the US master in this regard. Certainly, there have been rumblings from US leaders and media about the need for Maliki to be more “inclusive” and so on.

Ultimately, however, imperialism has what exists on the ground. In Iraq, the Shia are the majority. Therefore, it will be the Shia bourgeoisie that will rule. And capitalist politics is sectarian, nationalist, exclusivist, chauvinist – anything other than “non-exclusive” – a proletarian concept – almost by definition. And therefore, whatever complaints the US might make, if the US launches air strikes “against ISIS,” in the *current context* – before the rest of the Sunni coalition turns against ISIS of its own accord – these will be strikes against the Iraqi Sunni uprising as a whole, that will bolster Maliki’s sectarian regime and its entire sectarian dynamic – if only because the US does not have an alternative ruling class regime to work through.

If US were to take “war on ISIS” into Syria …

But is this likely to be different in Syria, where there is no Iraq-style coalition with ISIS, but on the contrary, a magnificent resistance of all anti-Assad resistance forces against ISIS? In other words, with the US threatening possible intervention to stop ISIS, are we likely to see the US finally, after 3.5 years, come through with some serious military aid to the FSA to help it fight ISIS in Syria?

Since the beginning of the Syrian revolution, the US has refused to provide arms to the secular Free Syrian Army (FSA), using the excuse that such arms might find their way to various Islamists or jihadists, especially the al-Qaida-linked forces such as ISIS.

Yet the irony is that while the US has still to provide a bullet to the FSA (other than a few weapons to one single, small, newly formed militia earlier this year), it is precisely the FSA and their Islamist rebel allies that have been the only force in the region actually fighting ISIS. The FSA and ISIS declared war on each other in August last year, and have been constantly at war since; then beginning in January this year, the rebel alliance of FSA/Mujahideen Army/ Islamic Front/Jabhat al-Nusra have been waging a sustained war to drive ISIS out of as much of the liberated territory as they can.

To understand why this is not likely to lead to any change in US policy towards the FSA, we need to look at a bit of background on US policy towards the FSA and the Syrian jihadists.

For the last year and a half, the major US aim of US policy has been to try to bludgeon a small section of “vetted” FSA into turning themselves into a “Sawha” (Awakening) movement to fight al-Qaida in Syria (named after the movement the US and Saudi Arabia armed to defeat al-Qaida in Iraq in 2007-8), mainly Jabhat al-Nusra (JaN, now the official wing of al-Qaida, since a-Qaida disowned ISIS); overwhelmingly, the main condition on which the US has offered to perhaps send a few guns to some select FSA units has always been that whoever receives them must be willing to launch a full frontal war on the jihadist forces.

From the first time FSA fighters were told by US agents that if they wanted arms they would need to turn them against Jabhat al-Nusra, back in late 2012, it was clear the US wanted the FSA to take on al-Nusra now, before defeating Assad – regardless of the blood-drenched division that would cause between two opponents of such a powerful and bloody dictatorship (and of course confusion, blood and division among the mainstream Islamist elements in between). When the FSA members said that unity against Assad’s more powerful forces was paramount at present, the US officer replied “We’d prefer you fight Al Nusra now, and then fight Assad’s army.” (http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/middle-east/americas-hidden-agenda-in-syrias-war).

It is difficult to conceive of this as anything other than a plan for mutual destruction; as usual, it is a question of class: whether the media claims US and Syrian “like” each other or not, there is nothing worse from the imperialist point of view than a revolution led by workers and peasants overthrowing an entrenched capitalist regime. The US would like a face-saving modification and rearrangement of the regime (the ‘Yemeni solution’, similar to the CIA’s original plan for Iraq), but that is an entirely different thing. In fact the aim of that is precisely to calm down the revolutionary fever. Short of that, the US wants it extinguished, and mutual suicide appears a good method.

Likewise, the communique from the G8 meeting last June called for a transitional authority (consisting of elements of regime and opposition) which would “preserve or restore” the Syrian state apparatus, stressing that “this includes the military forces and security services”, and called on both the regime and opposition forces to “destroy and expel from Syria all organisations and individuals affiliated to al Qaida and any other non-state actors linked to terrorism.” And on June 23, French president Francois Hollande demanded Syrian rebels expel “extremist” groups from areas they control as a condition for getting any French arms (http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2013/Jun-23/221321-hollande-urges-syria-rebels-to-retake-extremist-held-zones.ashx#axzz2X5dwF4Mo).

The FSA has always rejected this imperialist “advice.” According to FSA Colonel Akaidi, a military defector then heading the Aleppo military council, the US wants to turn the FSA “into the Sahwa,” but “if they [the US] help us so that we kill each other, then we don’t want their help” (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/71e492d0-acdd-11e2-9454-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2UPVgOFXt).

However, for its own reasons, the FSA spent much of the first half of 2013 clashing with JaN, as it took up the fight to defend the Syrian masses against JaN’s sporadic attempts to impose a new “Islamist” dictatorship, or to defend itself from JaN attacks. As such, the FSA was simply defending its own agenda, not that of the US. The FSA fought with its own aims, when it chose, the way it chose. And once it had imposed several defeats on JaN; and JaN even went so far as to offer some apologies; and once all the most violently reactionary elements, and nearly all the foreign, non-Syrian, elements of JaN split and formed ISIS mid-2013, there were no further clashes between JaN and the FSA that I am aware of; both focused on fighting the regime, alongside other Islamist fighters in between.
And while still undoubtedly a sectarian organisation that the FSA and other Syrian revolutionaries will have to deal with in the future, JaN markedly moderated its behaviour, feeling the pressure of its own Syrian base; indeed, JaN includes a significant base of former secular FSA fighters who only switched to JaN because it had better weapons.

In contrast, the whole of the second half of 2013 was an open war between the FSA and ISIS, as the FSA, representing the Syrian masses, took up the fight to defend the masses in liberated zones as ISIS tried to replace Assad’s secular-sectarian-fascist state with an Islamo-fascist state. And in January 2014, the Islamic Front and even JaN itself joined the FSA in this full-frontal war on ISIS.

While western imperialist observers, and most leftists, tend to put JaN and ISIS together into the same “al-Qaida” box, it is very important to understand the very crucial distinction that all Syrian revolutionaries make between the two. One may find it distasteful, but in the context of fight to the death against the sensational brutality of both the Assad and ISIS regimes, few Syrian revolutionaries will be in the mood to pay much attention to western sensibilities.

Yet despite this war on ISIS, the US has still refused to arm the FSA. One might assume that the FSA was doing what US imperialism had been telling them to do since late 2012, ie, fight al-Qaida. Even though the FSA is fighting with their own agenda and not that of the US, one might assume that imperialism should have been happy that it just happened to coincide with their interests, regardless of intent.

However, this was not good enough for the US.

First, US imperialism has made it clear all along that fighting ISIS is not enough – the US sees JaN as just as bad,* if not worse, than ISIS* in terms of US interests, precisely because JaN actually seems to be interested, in its own regressive way, in fighting the Assad regime, Israel and US imperialism, whereas ISIS’ rhetoric about all this means little more than capturing already liberated zones and imposing theocratic repression against Syrians – both Assad and the US can live with that as long as it is restricted to the far north and east of Syria (and, until recently, remote northern regions of Iraq). But as JaN is currently on side, the FSA and all the rest of the Syrian rebel alliance are resolutely opposed to this US diktat and to splitting the anti-Assad (and anti-ISIS) resistance.

The US attitude to this joint rebel war on ISIS was summarised by Ben Hubbard in the New York Times, who wrote in in January that “neither of the two sides in the rebel fighting presents a particularly attractive face to Western policy makers … Further complicating the rebel landscape is the Nusra Front, one of Syria’s most powerful rebel groups, which has also declared allegiance to Al Qaeda but whose fighters have fought alongside other rebel groups against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria in recent days” (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/09/world/middleeast/syrian-rebels-said-to-oust-qaeda-linked-group-from-its-aleppo-headquarters.html?_r=0).

Clarifying the US stand further, in late January, James Clapper, the US director of national intelligence, told the Senate intelligence committee that Jabhat al-Nusra “does have aspirations for attacks on the homeland (ie, on the US),” and claimed that some 26,000 of Syria’s rebels were jihadist extremists (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/29/al-qaida-syria-nusra-front-intelligence-threat). Similarly, CIA director John Brennan claimed that JaN aimed “to recruit individuals and develop the capability to be able not just to carry out attacks inside of Syria, but also to use Syria as a launching pad.” Around the same time, an Israeli intelligence official put the number at 30,000 and claimed that after toppling Assad “or strengthening their foothold in Syria they are going to move and deflect their effort and attack Israel” (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/10596723/Over-30000-al-Qaeda-linked-fighters-in-Syria-Israeli-official-claims.html). Quoting such absurd numbers revealed that the US and Israel were not only talking about ISIS; in fact they were not even only talking about ISIS and JaN, but other non-al-Qaida groups as well.

The second reason that fighting ISIS is not good enough for the US is that it is all very well if the FSA fights ISIS, but the US has apparently offered to give some fighters some guns as long as they *only* use them to fight ISIS and *do not use them to fight Assad,* according to some rebels to whom this offer was made (who apparently are a split-off from the northwestern FSA coalition, the Syrian Revolutionaries Front, SRF): https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=9Cb3OURdl3g#t=469.

It appears that the SRF itself may also have been offered arms if it took up the fight against JaN as well as ISIS, because here is their commander rejecting this US diktat: “I am not fighting against al-Qa’ida… it’s not our problem” (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/i-am-not-fighting-againstalqaida-itsnot-our-problem-says-wests-last-hope-in-syria-9233424.html). By “al-Qaida” he clearly means JaN, because it was precisely the SRF that has led the attack on ISIS since January. Clearly, this was not good enough for the US. Incidentally, this is a totally secular commander and totally secular coalition – rejecting an imperialist diktat to fight al-Nusra jihadists, but who has led the war on the worse ISIS jihadists. Yet the kind of “leftist” who believes facts are irrelevant to analysis will no doubt call him a “US-backed jihadist.”

Even US hawks who advocate US intervention in Syria, such as John McCain, reveal their real aims often enough. Last year, McCain called for an “international force” to enter Syria to secure stocks of chemical weapons because “these chemical weapons … cannot fall into the hands of the jihadists” (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/article11595592.ece). His colleague in advocacy of hawkish intervention, Lindsey Graham, favours direct US drone strikes into Syria targeting the jihadists (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/03/senators-kerry-admits-obama-s-syria-policy-is-failing.html); not surprisingly, Graham has also come out in favour of drone strikes in Iraq in the current crisis.

What all this means seems clear enough: if the US were to launch strikes “against ISIS,” and if such strikes spread from Iraq into Syria, it is highly likely that the US would also attack JaN, despite the JaN’s prominent role in the war on ISIS, especially in Deir-Azor in the east. And whatever one may think of JaN, at the present conjuncture, an attack on JaN would be a massive attack on the strength of the anti-Assad *and anti-ISIS* resistance in Syria and would be a tremendous boost to the regime.

Furious Syrian rebel assault on ISIS does not gain US support

In recent weeks leading up to the seizure of Mosul, the Syrian rebel alliance has been engaged in furious battle attempting to keep hold of the east Syrian city Deir-Azour against a sustained ISIS siege. While they fought ISIS, Assad helped ISIS by terror bombing the city (http://syriadirect.org/main/36-interviews/1448-isis-regime-close-in-on-deir-e-zor-rebels), in effect, a joint siege; and after ISIS murdered 3 FSA commanders in Deir-Azour last week, regime warplanes bombed the mourning tent on June 21, killing 16 people (http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/2014/06/21/ISIS-executes-three-Syrian-rebel-officers.html). And in comparison with the fight put up by the Syrian rebels, Maliki’s troops in Iraq just ran away from ISIS.

And here is the crowning irony of the US line that “arms to the Syrian rebels might end up in al-Qaida hands” – somehow the same logic was not applied to the sectarian Iraqi regime, which was loaded with US arms, and so as the Iraqi army ran away from Mosul, a whole lot of heavy weaponry actually did fall into the hands of ISIS! And now ISIS is taking that weaponry back into Syria to continue its war against the Syrian revolution (http://news.yahoo.com/equipped-humvees-isil-clashes-rivals-syria-200653571.html).

Even more sensationally, precisely now that this heroic resistance to ISIS in Deir-Azour might be expected to be utilised by the US for its own reasons, the US has moved even further away from taking such a course. On June 22, while visiting Assad’s fellow recently-“elected” dictator Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi in Cairo, US Secretary of State John Kerry, announced he was “discouraging Arab nations from sending financial support to even moderate opposition Sunni groups in Syria” because such aid “could be used to help the growing insurgency in Iraq.” Kerry said he planned to deliver the same message to leaders of other Arab states in the following days (http://www.ablxboston.com/national/63241-john-kerry-urges-arab-nations-to-not-fund-groups-behind-isis-militants.html).

Very difficult for the FSA to win. If it fights together with al-Nusra against the Assad regime, any arms it receives might reach al-Nusra jihadists. If it fights against ISIS, any arms it receives might reach ISIS jihadists. It would require an extraordinary imagination to not see that US imperialism would prefer the FSA and the Syrian uprising to disappear from the face of the Earth.

Obama clarifies: No to revolution led by farmers and workers

And the reasons for this were given by none other than the chief executive officer of US imperialism on almost the same day Kerry made his remarks. Replying to a question from Norah O’Donnell on ‘CBS This Morning’, about whether arming the “moderate forces” (presumably meaning the secular FSA revolutionaries) would have prevented the rise of ISIS, Obama claimed that despite having allegedly “spent a lot of time trying to work with a moderate opposition in Syria,” there was no chance that sending them arms would have helped, because

“when you get farmers, dentists and folks who have never fought before going up against a ruthless opposition in Assad, the notion that they were in a position to suddenly overturn not only Assad but also ruthless, highly trained jihadists if we just sent a few arms is a fantasy.”

Now, we can note that the “lot of time” never included a bullet; and the fact that the FSA were not up against the jihadists until long after the revolution had started and after Assad had already slaughtered tens of thousands; and the fact that the farmers and “dentists” were joined by lots of other workers and above all by tens of thousands of deserters from the Syrian Arab Army who did indeed have military experience; some good refutations of Obama’s logic here http://ammarabdulhamid.com/2014/06/21/the-lies-obama-tells-about-syria and here http://claysbeach.blogspot.com.au/2014/06/odonnells-good-question-and-obamas-bad.html.

But aside from all this, I just want to note that Obama has done us a great favour.

Here we see, in plain black and white, the hostility of the head of US imperialism to the very idea of a revolution led by mere farmers and workers against a regime of mega-capitalists. Imagine if arming workers and peasants did help them overthrow an oligarchy. Imagine how the example might spread. Imagine the horror of the US ruling class at the very thought. Obama just told us in plain English.

The rise of ISIS is of course an enormous threat to this workers’ and farmers’ uprising in Syria, and the just struggle in Iraq which it is temporarily attached to, due to the intense sectarian division it fosters between Arab working people of differing religious sect. Much has been said about ISIS abolishing the borders established by imperialism at Sykes-Pilot. This of course is a good thing, but only if done on the basis of unity of the Arabic working peoples as they abolish these imposed borders. ISIS by contrast abolishes those borders while setting up new ones, across sect lines. This indicates the fact that ISIS’s anti-Shia “radicalism” is in fact a fundamentally conservative state-building project which is less threatening to imperialism and local ruling classes than the mainstream al-Qaida’s continuing focus on imperialism and the local reactionary regimes, and certainly less than genuine popular revolution.

For the popular revolutionary wave to progress it will need to decisively defeat ISIS and its project for sectarian division. While sectarianism has grown as a negative factor in the Syrian struggle as a whole, the momentum of the united rebel fight against ISIS’ extreme theocratism and sectarianism is a positive on in this regard; while in Iraq the Sunni will need to feel secure enough from Maliki’s repression before throwing off the yolk of ISIS.

However, if ISIS brutality provides the cover for imperialism to intervene, the effect will only be counterrevolutionary – by also hitting at JaN in Syria and thereby weakening the Syrian revolutionary forces, and by solidifying Iraqi Sunni behind ISIS and entrenching the sectarian divide.

By Michael Karadjis

Over the last year, the sectarian (mainly Sunni versus Alawite) element of the Syrian conflict has markedly grown, within an uprising that began as a multi-sectarian popular democratic uprising against Syria’s tyrannical regime of Bashar al-Assad. The hold of Sunni sectarianism is by no means universal among the insurgent Syrian masses and their myriad of civil and armed resistance organisations; on the contrary, despite persistent myths, the revolution still contains a powerful secular wing (both within the civil uprising and the Free Syrian Army), and even the largest parts of the clearly political-Islamist wings are not specifically sectarian; and many are markedly moderate Islamists. However, there is no denying that a dangerous level of Sunni sectarianism has grown, especially among the more extreme ‘jihadist’ fringe affiliated to al-Qaida, and that this is an entirely negative and reactionary development.

As I explained in a recent article (links.org.au/node/3714), the Assad regime bears the main responsibility for the exacerbation of sectarianism in the Syrian conflict, on both sides. Though the regime is purportedly “secular,” it is heavily dominated by members of the Alawite religious minority to which Assad and his ruling family belong, especially the military-security apparatus, and this fact combined with the level of slaughter conducted against the mostly Sunni insurgent peasantry and urban poor has facilitated a sectarian mirror among parts of the opposition seeking the overthrow of Assad’s rule.

“Main responsibility” does not mean the Islamic extremists are not also responsible for their own actions; it simply means that overwhelming responsibility rests with the regime which uses its massive superiority in advanced weaponry to extraordinarily barbaric effect against the people who are justifiably in revolt against the tyranny, and it is this context of a Syria dominated by such a regime, by such an awesomely armed capitalist state apparatus, that leads to similar kinds of barbarism, whether in thought or in practice, among parts of the opposition.

In the past I put the blame on other regional states, mostly Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Sunni-based Gulf monarchies, for deliberately fuelling the Sunni-sectarian Islamist parts of the opposition, in order to help Assad divide the Syrian masses on religious lines, thereby undermining the initial democratic character of the uprising.

For example, in my article ‘The Geopolitics of the Syrian Uprising’ (http://links.org.au/node/2991) in 2012 I wrote:

“…the Saudis and Qataris are pushing their own very ambitious regional realignment, using parts of the Muslim Brotherhood as a proxy, for their own reasons, while the AKP regime in Turkey is doing much the same for similar reasons as well as other specific reasons related to Kurdistan … the Saudi-Qatari need to derail the Syrian revolution coalesced with the regional rivalry with Iran to form a policy of promoting the Sunni fundamentalist forces active within the Syrian opposition in a bid to not only try to take control of the uprising – as elsewhere – but also to foment Sunni-Alawite sectarian conflict, to turn popular revolution into sectarian bloodletting, killing two birds with the one stone. Given the fact that there is a large Shia minority in Saudi Arabia in the eastern oilfields region, where rebellion is centred, and that the Shia majority led the uprising in Bahrain against the minority Sunni sectarian monarchy, this fomenting of sectarianism regionally also allows these monarchies to demonise the uprisings in their countries as nothing but Iranian subversion. There seems little doubt that the Saudi-Qatari aim is the destruction of Assad’s regime and the conquest of power by a Brotherhood-led regime, effecting a victory in the regional rivalry with Iran and a sectarian victory over their own Shia minorities/majorities.”

In early 2013, in ‘Is there a US war on Syria? The Syrian Uprising, the US and Israel’ (http://links.org.au/node/3344), I referred to this “Gulf intervention” as a second “counterrevolution” alongside the Assad regime’s bloody counterrevolution:

“… these two relatively powerful states are engaged in an aggressive regional “sub-imperialist” project, with the dual aims of rivaling Iranian influence in the region, and turning the democratic impulse of the Arab Spring, including its Syrian chapter, into a Sunni-Shia sectarian war. The democratic impulse was and is a mortal danger to their absolute monarchies just as much as to regime’s like that of Assad, as Saudi Arabia’s suppression of the uprising in Bahrain shows. Their intervention is thus a counterrevolution trying to hijack a revolution.”

In both articles, I stressed that Israel held the complete opposite point of view to the Gulf states, that in fact it saw Assad as the lesser evil to any of the forces, democratic-secular, Islamist or jihadist, trying to overthrow it; and that the Saudi-Qatari position should not be confused with the US position (pushing for a cosmetic ‘Yemeni solution’ rearrangement within the regime to defuse the revolution), as these states are acting on their own interests and are not US puppets. While in this article I will show why my earlier view on the Saudi-Qatari role was wrong, to the extent there was any truth in the claim they support Islamists in Syria, then the clear distinction I made to US and Israeli views and interests remains.

The view I will demonstrate to be true here does not deny the dangerous level of sectarianism among parts of the opposition, nor that this is a deadly danger to the revolution that must be fought tooth and nail; indeed it has the same effect in reverse of solidifying the sectarianism, or even merely the fear, of some of the regime’s base of support among minorities. This fits in with my discussion about ceasefire, of there being no military solution and so on, points I have continuously made, and the view expressed in my original article that therefore “all the non-sectarian parts of the resistance need to wage a relentless struggle against the influence of this destructive, reactionary sectarianism within its ranks.”

Indeed, it is still correct to refer to the more extreme sectarian and reactionary elements as a second, mirror-image, counterrevolution. However, this side of the counterrevolution is led unambiguously by the formerly al-Qaida affiliated Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (ISIS), an organisation which is at war with all other parts of the resistance (secular, Islamist and even the more moderate al-Qaida affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra); which is widely suspected of being in cahoots with the regime; and which certainly has no connection with the Saudi and Gulf monarchies who rightly view al-Qaida as their mortal enemy.
The issue therefore is the relative role of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states in the promotion of sectarianism on the anti-Assad side. While they may have played some role, as I noted in my previous article, “a hard look at the reality forces me to say that this factor has been greatly exaggerated and misunderstood” (including by myself).

I have no special desire to want to admit that I was (partially) wrong in these cases. I have no political/emotional attachment to not attacking reactionary and tyrannical regimes like those in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, and therefore blaming them, along with the regime, for the sectarian carnage. In fact, this discourse is very neat and comforting to me, and to other leftists, including many who probably found my earlier articles commendable for exactly this reason. And the rationale appears to be excellent.

However, there is one problem with this entire scenario: it only bears a very minimal connection to facts, if any. Even if you look back at the articles where I wrote these things, it would not be difficult to notice the lack of concrete evidence I presented. My “hard look at reality” can be summed up quite simply: I read more.

The Gulf and Syrian Islamism: States or private networks?

In their excellent article “Empowering the Democratic Resistance in Syria” (www.arab-reform.net/empowering-democratic-resistance-syria/), Bassma Kodmani and Felix Legrand note that the widely-discussed funding of the rebellion from “the Gulf” by no means refers to funding by Gulf regimes:

“In the Middle East, funding is overwhelmingly from Islamic sources and brings with it a conservative agenda. Money circulates through complex channels, some of which are controlled by governments but many of which are managed through private business and religious networks. These networks were first established in the late 1970s and early 1980s to support the Islamic resistance in Afghanistan against Soviet occupation, and have been re-activated during conflicts in the Balkans, Algeria, Yemen and Iraq over the last three decades. While some of the funds are channeled with the blessing of the governments of Gulf countries, thus making them directly responsible for the Islamization of the resistance, these networks are often richly endowed with private resources and are in some cases too powerful for governments to confront, even if they chose to.”

In fact, in the case of Syria in particular, we find that general, sweeping statements such as this are often of little use. But even this general statement makes it clear that only “some” of this “Islamic” funding is state-connected; overwhelmingly this funding and arming of “Islamist” groups comes from non-government “Islamist” networks – of which, more below.

Moreover, we need to connect this discussion back to the main problem: the alleged weakness of the secular Free Syrian Army (FSA) vis-a-vis Islamist militias. This is usually explained as being caused by better armed and funded Islamist groups attracting more fighters, compared to the lack of arms in the hands of secular groups. As has been very well-documented, in most cases these fighters have no interest in the Islamist or jihadist ideologies of the groups they join – more important is being able to fight effectively and/or to help provide for their impoverished families while they fight. This is normally explained by the fact that the “secular” western imperialist powers provide zero arms to the secular FSA, while “the Gulf” heavily supplies the Islamist groups. The first part of this equation is absolutely true; the second part is true in as much as we mean non-state Islamist networks in the Gulf, rather than the regimes.

Above all, what the study by Kodmani and Legrand makes abundantly clear right throughout is that it is the jihadist groups, particularly the two al-Qaida franchises (Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS), that are better armed than both the secular FSA and the moderate Islamists, and that above all it is these groups recruiting on the basis of better arms and funding; many moderate Islamist groups are little better armed and funded than the FSA. Yet while the report notes that the Gulf regimes have funded some moderate Islamist militias – more on that below – no-one who is remotely informed about the Syrian situation suggests the Gulf regimes have armed or funded these anti-Gulf regime jihadist groups.

Initial Gulf reaction to uprising: Support Assad

My response will consist of five parts. First, the initial reaction of the Gulf to the Syrian uprising, which was support for the regime, and what this means in terms of the theory. Second, who Qatar and Saudi Arabia began backing when they finally turned against the regime. Third, my opinion on why this occurred. Fourth, the sharp Saudi turn from mid-2012 towards the bourgeois-secularist leaderships and the reasons for this. Five, a look at some other problems with the theory.

First, whether or not we judge that the Gulf later decided to use sectarianism against the revolution, that was not their first response. Indeed, the first response of the three regional powers who later emerge as the key backers of the Syrian resistance – Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey – was to use Assad against the revolution.

For example, on 3 April 2011, Qatari Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani sent a letter to Assad declaring Qatar’s support for Syria amid “attempts at destabilization” (https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/nownews/qatari_emir_voices_qatars_support_for_syria). In late March, United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahayan likewise called Assad to reaffirm that the UAE stands by Damascus (https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/latestnews/uae_reaffirms_support_for_syria). Qatar’s close ally, Erdogan’s AKP regime in Turkey, likewise offered Damascus support, only with the mild proviso that Assad carry out some of the “reform” that he had promised.

The Saudi Arabian monarchy made similar robust declarations of support to the regime; on 28th March 2011, “Al-Assad received a call from Saudi King Abdullah, whereby the latter expressed the Kingdom’s support in what is targeting us from the conspiracy to hit its security and stability” clarifying that “the Saudi Kingdom stands by Syria’s leadership and people to put down this conspiracy” (http://syria-news.com/readnews.php?sy_seq=130662). Indeed, even as late as July, just as Qatar was finally suspending relations with Damascus, Saudi Arabia stepped in with a long-term 375 million riyal (US100 million) loan to Damascus (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MH11Ak02.html), while Kuwait threw in another 30 million Dinars (http://www.dp-news.com/pages/detail.aspx?articleid=90956); this rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Qatar, we will see, played as much a role as the later antipathy either felt towards Damascus.

Even when the Gulf Cooperation Council did finally urge an end to “bloodshed” in Syria and called for major reforms on August 6, expressing their “sorrow” about the situation, they still stressed their support for “preserving the security, stability, and unity of Syria” (http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2011/08/06/161072.html).

Notably, this was no different to US policy; responding to questions in Congress regarding the different US reaction to events in Libya, where NATO was then intervening, and Syria, Hillary Clinton responded: “There is a different leader in Syria now [meaning Bashar, as opposed to his father]. Many of the members of Congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe he’s a reformer” (http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/FTN_032711.pdf). Even after months of NATO bombing Libya, and Assad slaughtering protesters in Syria, the US was still urging “dialogue” between regime and opposition in Syria (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/30/syria-plan-reform-bashar-al-assad).

Of course this initial strong support to Damascus can be explained simply as “class trumps sectarianism” when revolution threatens all, before new tactics had to be considered. However, a look at the situation on the eve of the revolts also shows clearly that the allegedly strong “sectarian” motivations for backing Sunni “Islamists” in Syria by these powers was absent; even if it were true that this came as an afterthought later, as a new strategy for deflecting the revolution as many have suggested, then there was nothing necessary about this particular course of counterrevolution being chosen.

Strong Gulf connections to regime

In fact, Qatar and Turkey had been the closest allies of the Assad regime in the region; the Assad, al-Thani and Erdogan families even had Black Sea holidays together. This is connected to the fact that, despite common misperceptions nowadays, the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood, which Qatar was sponsoring, and which is related to the ruling AKP in Turkey, was not particularly sectarian towards Shia; in fact Turkey also had excellent relations with Iran at the time, and in the Lebanon disputes, where Saudi Arabia had backed the Sunni Future Movement against Hezbollah and other groups connected to Syria, Qatar in fact had been pro-Hezbollah – probably, if for no other reason, to spite its Saudi rival. The close relationship between Hamas (the Palestinian wing of the MB) and Hezbollah was another example.

More generally, as has been widely analysed, this alliance was not just about leaders liking each other, or about lack of sectarianism: it was also about the fact that Assad Junior’s neo-liberal reforms had brought loads of foreign capital into Syria, much of it from the Gulf, and the star in that show was none other than Qatari capital.

Despite Qatar and Turkey, however, it may be argued that Saudi Arabia and Iran already saw themselves as geopolitical rivals, and thus promoting sectarianism, or at least using existing sectarian alignments in the region to bolster one’s geopolitical position against the other, was logical. As noted above, this logic had manifested itself around the middle of the last decade over Lebanon, when rival March 8 and March 14 coalitions of Lebanese sectarian parties lined up with Saudi Arabia on one side and Syria and Iran on the other; though even there, ti should be noted, that the rightist Sunni forces the Saudis were backing (alongside rigthist Christian allies) were not in any sense Sunni Islamist radicals, but a secular rightist party based in the Sunni community.

Moreover, this blimp in Saudi-Syrian relations masks the fact that a Saudi-Syrian alliance had been the guarantor of rule by a coalition of sectarian parties, representing the rival wings of the Lebanese oligarchy, from the Taiff agreement in 1990 right up until 2005.

Not surprisingly, therefore, the 2005 shakedown was basically a rearrangement to prepare a new deal for Lebanese capitalist stability. In late 2010, Assad and Saudi King Abdullah met in Damascus and exchanged “senior Orders of Merit,” in preparation for their trip to Beirut, where they were photographed holding hands, to hammer out an agreement between Future Movement head Hariri and Hezbollah head Nasrallah, known as the Syrian-Saudi Initiative, to revive the 1990-2005 order in a new package. In fact, claiming the road to stability in Beirut ran through Damascus, Abdullah even instructed Hariri “to grant Hezbollah all the key government posts it was seeking for itself and allies in the March 8 alliance, and to issue a cabinet policy statement that pledged to “protect and embrace” the arms of Hezbollah” – indicating just how completely removed Saudi policy was from some kind of fundamentalist “anti-Shiite” sectarianism at the time of the outbreak of the Syrian uprising (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MH11Ak02.html).

Qatar, Turkey and the Muslim Brotherhood

Qatar finally suspended relations with Damascus months later, on July 17, after pro-regime protesters in Syria, angry at (Qatar-funded) Al Jazeera’s coverage of the Syrian uprising, pelted the Qatari embassy in Damascus with eggs, rocks and vegetables. Saudi Arabia eventually followed suit and broke relations in August. The fundamental reason was that the Assad regime’s spectacularly, and surprisingly (even for such a regime) brutal repression had vastly expanded the uprising, and by July-August, while still overwhelmingly a civil uprising facing machine guns to the chest, some parts of the revolution had begun to fight back with arms. Recognising there was no chance of Assad crushing the revolt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and the US slowly moved to a new strategy: the Yemeni solution, aiming to maintain the core of the capitalist regime, especially its military-security apparatus, in power, but for Assad and his immediate henchmen to step down, and bring some leading bourgeois oppositionists into the regime, to defuse the revolution.

There is no great body of evidence that the Gulf states and Turkey immediately chose to direct all support to Sunni Islamists (let alone hard-line Salafis) and none to the secular FSA; however, to the extent that there is some evidence of connections to Islamist militias in this early period, ironically it is religiously moderate, and less-sectarian, Qatar that seemed to play this role rather than the Saudi regime with its extremist internal religious regime and well-developed anti-Shia discourse.

Turkey hosted the Syrian National Council, the first exile-based opposition body, which was led by veteran Communist George Sabra, but was largely dominated by exile-based Muslim Brotherhood cadres. Qatar had already adopted the MB as its horse throughout the region (in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and now Syria), and as a soft-Islamist party, the AKP was closely connected. However, as an exile-based group, it initially had little connection with the Free Syrian Army as it emerged on the ground in Syria, largely led by defecting Syrian officers, with a strong secular and Syrian nationalist background.

In March 2012, a new coordinating body was set up between the SNC and the FSA, with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey agreeing to direct funds via the FSA external command, also based in Turkey. However, to what extent this aid got to the FSA on the ground, and the politics of which FSA groups got it and which didn’t, and even the relations between the exile based FSA leadership and the FSA on the ground, are all issues around which there is little clarity even today.

It wasn’t until early to mid-2012 that specifically Islamist armed militias began to form in Syria. By all accounts, the growth of a moderate Islamist section of the revolution, alongside its more secular component, was a home-grown, “organic” development, based among the more socially conservative Sunni peasantry, and the urban poor in the new sub-urban shantytowns, who had been ravaged by Assad junior’s neo-liberal reforms, and who had traditionally been much less impacted by the official “secularism” of the regime and its bourgeois and urban upper middle class base. In addition, compared to the south of Syria, the north has tended to be more conservative as a whole (https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/commentaryanalysis/the-southern-front).

Working via its Turkish ally to the north, some Qatari and MB funding thus began to go to a number moderate Islamist formations in the north, some with tenuous MB connections. These included the Suquor al-Sham brigade in Idlib, formed in early 2012, the Liwa al-Tawhid brigade in Aleppo, formed in mid-2012, and the nation-wide network Ahfad al-Rasoul, which also originated in Idlib. However, these groups all considered themselves to be part of the FSA, and the MB itself mainly works through non-Islamist-specific channels such as the Syrian National Council and on the ground with the FSA, so the extent to which Qatari state funding went specifically to Islamist as opposed to secular FSA bodies is much less certain than often assumed.

Like the MB itself, these soft Islamist militias claimed to support democracy and to want to work for a more “Islamist” order gradually via democratic means. The report by Kodmani and Legrand (see above) notes that these “moderate or mainstream Islamists, who should be clearly distinguished from the extremist and Jihadi groups, reflect the moderate Islam, which Syrians like to call social Islam traditionally prevalent among the Sunni community in Syria and therefore are part of the social fabric of the country.” It further notes that “the political leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood is committed to a democratic and pluralistic agenda for post-Assad Syria. This is clearly stated in the political platform of the Muslim Brotherhood published in 2004 and re-confirmed in a document published in 2012.”

Far from promoting sectarianism, the strikingly moderate Liwa al-Tawhid is well-known for protecting local Christians in Aleppo against jihadist threats (http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2013/Sep-21/232025-christian-hostel-in-aleppo-has-own-view-of-jihadist-rebels.ashx#axzz2gfb4z1J2); while Suquor al-Sham leader, Ahmed Issa, though seen as marginally more hard-line as an Islamist, does not push sectarianism, declaring he “welcomes an alliance with any movement or sect, including the Alawite sect, in order to achieve our goal which is to overthrow this regime” (https://www.academia.edu/5825228/Syrian_Jihadism).

It could thus be claimed that to the extent that Qatar and the MB did eventually promote a number of moderate Sunni Islamist forces, which was part of the opposition becoming more “Sunni” in a general sense, none had any relation to “jihadism,” and none were even remotely connected to conceptions of “sectarian war” against the Alawi or Shia. Moreover, as members of the various and changing coalitions of military forces under the general title of “FSA,” these forces were officially fighting for a government program that only talked about democratic republic and so on; despite the MB’s role in the SNC, it had no “Islamist” program whatsoever.

Saudi Arabia’s early Islamist influence

The role of Saudi Arabia was much less prominent at this early stage, but it was only at this stage that we can talk about a Saudi relationship with Islamist forces at all. Due to its hostility to the MB, and rivalry with Qatar, Saudi Arabia initially avoided specifically Islamist groups, and to the extent that it may have tried to push a more “Islamist” framework, it chose to do this through influence within the mainstream FSA, led by military defector Riad Mousa al-Asaad; its strategy was always more aligned with attempting to co-opt “power secularists,” particularly with military connections (more on this below).

The Saudis’ main connection to Sunni Islamism at this early stage seems to have been via an influential “televangelist” Saudi-based Syrian preacher, Adnan al-Ar’ur. He had been known for years using his radio show to debate Shia preachers and was clearly sectarian in his outlook. His fervent support for the uprising gained him much support in Syria, but there is much less evidence that his sectarian ideas were influential as such. Staying within the framework of the FSA, the regime was able to use his sermons to slander the FSA, and even dub him the “voice of the FSA” in order to taint it with the brush of sectarianism, an assertion the FSA vigorously denied.

His most infamous quote was one where he said that those Alawites supporting the regime and who “violated sanctities” (presumed to mean who raped women) would be chopped up and fed to dogs after the victory. While this statement was obviously barbaric and grist in the regime’s propaganda mill, in the same speech he also said that “no harm would be done to those (Alawites) who remained neutral” and “as for those supporting the revolution, they will be with us” (Thomas Pierret, 2013, Religion and State in Syria, Cambridge Middle East Studies), while also endorsing an open letter by the Muslim Brotherhood and the League of Syrian Ulama to the Syrian religious community stressing that “none would be condemned on the basis of his communal identity” after the revolution. Reassuring? Perhaps not. But the issues here are, firstly, that apparent Saudi support for someone like Ar’ur was somewhat anomalous (as we will see below); secondly, that his role was temporary, before the Saudis brought him to order and then his role and influence disappeared; and finally, the question of chicken and egg in this connection.

Chicken and egg: The Gulf and Syrian Islamism

The question here regarding this Qatari support for moderate Islamist militias, and this Saudi connection to Ar’ur, is that of cause and effect. It is my view now that both the growing “Islamism” and the growing Sunni sectarianism – two factors that, while related, should not be confused – were essentially home-grown (the first related to the class divide the characterised the revolution, the second related more specifically to the terror unleashed by the Alawi regime), and it was this dynamic, together with the breathtaking level that the terror and repression against the Sunni peasantry reached, that tended to draw in the Gulf states, pressured them to live up to their claims to be protectors of Sunni Islam in a situation where the regime is creating a new Palestinian-style diaspora, rather than the other way around; though of course in any situation this complex, the chicken and egg will get confused throughout the course of events.
Syria expert Thomas Pierret explains it this way:

“A more accurate characterization is that the Syrian conflict’s internal dynamics have reshuffled regional alignments alongside unprecedentedly clear-cut sectarian dividing lines and that this has often occurred against the preferences of regional state actors − including Saudi Arabia and Iran. This is not to deny that regional actors sometimes contributed to deepening the sectarian character of the Syrian conflict. When they did so, however, it was generally as a by-product of expedient policies that followed sectarian patterns for lack of alternatives, but were not part of a deliberately sectarian agenda. In fact, outside of Syria, wholehearted exploitation of sectarian sentiments in relation to the conflict has often been the preserve of private actors that are not constrained by raison d’etre, in particular transnational Sunni (Salafi) and Shia networks” (http://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/PB162.pdf).

Thus the role of the Gulf regimes, especially Saudi Arabia, has been greatly exaggerated and misunderstood; when they did come in to aid Sunni forces, it was more reactive, following the situation, rather than causal
.
The case of the Saudi-based preacher for example. As shown above, the Saudi regime waited till mid-August 2011 to condemn the Assad regime, and as late as July gave Assad a massive loan; yet Ar’ur had been making fiery sermons supporting the uprising from the earliest repression of the Deraa protests in March. Such preaching had erupted all over the Gulf and throughout the region before either Saudi or Qatari moves against the regime; the existing sectarian dynamic in Syria led to widespread identification among the Sunni masses of the region with the new “Syrian Sunni Palestinians”; the Islamist and jihadist leaning sections of the bourgeoisie of the region sought to monopolise the sentiment; and the preachers gave them the ideology to “lead” it with. A good case example of this process is the following description of the situation in Kuwait by Elizabeth Dickinson:

“For the last two years, (former) MPs like (Hamad al-) Matar (apparently close to the Brotherhood – MK), as well as Kuwaiti charities, tribes, and citizens have raised money – possibly hundreds of millions of dollars – for armed groups fighting the Syrian regime. In many ways, the financing is highly organized. Smartly aligned to a given theme, battle, or season, campaigns are broadcast on social media and advertised with signage and elegant prose.

“But Matar’s account offers a glimpse of just how uncontrollable — even random — this support has become. In Kuwait, private financing came into political vogue in Sunni circles, bringing aboard legions of public figures seeking to associate themselves with support for the Syrian rebels. That broad base of popular support among Sunnis has rendered the phenomenon nearly unstoppable for the Kuwaiti government.

“Suddenly, everyone in Kuwait knew which diwaniyas and charities had funded a brigade. And that visibility attracted a new cohort of donors. Kuwait’s large Sunni tribes held massive fundraisers, in one case reportedly raising $14 million in just five days. They became competitions: Could the Ajman tribe outbid the Shammar? Social pressure increased the take — and made participation a necessity for many of Kuwait’s most prominent politicians” (http://mideastafrica.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/12/04/shaping_the_syrian_conflict_from_kuwait).

The Gulf rulers, who initially wanted to support Assad, were carried by this wave, and had to appear to lead it in order to coopt it, prevent their enemies (the jihadists) from doing so, and thus protect their thrones (while Saudi Arabia and Qatar also tried to ensure leadership vis a vis each other).

Private Gulf funding associated with opposition to Gulf regimes.

Chris Slee, in a comment on my recent article where he defends the view I used to support, notes that, “to complicate the picture, it should be noted that not all Sunni-sectarian groups are backed by the US and the Gulf states. Some groups, such as ISIS, are backed by sectors of the bourgeoisie and clergy in the Gulf states that are opposed to the existing Gulf regimes. These sectors of the ruling classes oppose the Gulf regimes’ subservience to the US, but do so from a reactionary ideological position.” Chris particularly suggests that ISIS “could be a problem for the US in the future” as it “could be an obstacle” to the kind of Yemeni solution outcome the US aims to achieve.

This is all a monumental understatement. First of all, it is not only ISIS that is already (not “could in the future”) a massive problem for the US and Gulf ruling classes; this is true of all the hard-line Salafist groups and even the bulk of mainstream Islamist groups, all of which are relentlessly anti-imperialist, all of which reject any kind of solution that includes elements of the regime, and none of which the US has ever had anything to do with.

Second, it is not only “groups such as ISIS” which are backed by the Gulf opposition bourgeoisie rather than the regimes. When the early literature about Gulf support to Sunni Islamist rebels is looked back at more carefully, virtually all of it – at least that which offers any concrete evidence – is precisely about these private networks in the Gulf, the religious charities, the Salafist preachers, the oppositionist wings of the bourgeoisie backing the Syrian Islamists – not the regimes. The fact that they are based among wings of the opposition bourgeoisie is very crucial to this analysis. And it was this element of the preachers, funders and armers that dominated the wave of “Sunni solidarity” from the very outset in the latter part of 2011.

The source above describing the situation in Kuwait notes about the forces involved in this upsurge:

“Since 2009, a coalition of Islamist, tribal, and youth groups have banded together to demand government and social reforms, among them an end to perceived government favoritism toward the mostly-Shiite merchant class. Now, Syria’s struggle seemed to fit into a narrative of Shiite repression of the Sunni common man.
“Many of the constituencies most active in fundraising have also been the most vocal opposition to the government. Dozens of Islamist and Salafist MPs boycotted the last two elections, but their ability to draw people to the streets is still a looming reality in Kuwaiti politics.

“”The government cannot do anything because if they move against such activities, the Islamist parties will start shouting loudly against the government,” Bashar AlSayegh, the editor of Kuwait’s Al Jareeda newspaper, explained” (http://mideastafrica.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/12/04/shaping_the_syrian_conflict_from_kuwait).

The rise of Syrian al-Qaida

This giddy activity of the Gulf oppositionist bourgeoisie, preachers and Islamic charities fed into various wings of Islamist fighters in Syria, including, not surprisingly, al-Qaida, which appeared in Syria in early 2012.

At this time, around the end of 2011 and early 2012, the particular conjuncture had produced a mixture of factors that, when jumbled together with little analysis, could easily create the conspiracy theory that has dominated red-brown pro-Assad propaganda ever since. The escalating repression had by then generalised the armed component of the opposition (whether secular or Islamist), a natural political-social process; Saudi Arabia and Qatar were now firmly pro-opposition and to one extent or another had some vague links with some Islamist forces; preachers from the Gulf were launching anti-Assad propaganda that was also increasingly sectarian; Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian wing of al-Qaida, announced its formation in January 2012; and a number of terrorist bombings hit civilian targets in Damascus. Jumbled together, the UFOish theory of “US-Gulf-Jihadist wicked conspiracy to destroy Syria” had been hatched.

In reality, however, the entrance of al-Qaida into the conflict demonstrated just how far out of the hands of the Gulf monarchies (let alone the US) the Syrian uprising had gone. The ravings the conspiracists have continually made for several years now about “Saudi Arabia arming the jihadists” or even of “the US and al-Qaida” being on the same side are so breathtakingly absurd that it is difficult to know where to start.

A good place might be to remind people that it was al-Qaida that bombed the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon with hijacked American passenger planes, that most of the 21 terrorists were originally from Saudi Arabia, and that al-Qaida represented a wing of the Saudi bourgeoisie that was fed up with the narrow rule of the Saudi and Gulf monarchies, which both excluded the majority of their class from political power, and which kept their nation in subservience to US imperialism.

Anyone who thinks the Saudi nationality of most 9/11 attackers and the Saudi origin of al-Qaida means that the Saudi monarchy attacked the US in 2001 is welcome to their deluded world-view; such people also probably think that the Saudi monarchy is arming al-Qaida in Syria.

And the importance of this from the point of view of the launching of “sectarian war” in Syria is that it is overwhelmingly the al-Qaida franchises, Jabhat al-Nusra, and especially ISIS, that have forcefully inserted a violent sectarian discourse, and a run of actual sectarian crimes, into the Syrian rebellion, not the overwhelming majority of mainstream Islamist groups. And it was Jabhat al-Nusra in particular that took responsibility for some of those terrorist attacks in Damascus at the turn of 2011-2012, though not for all (and there is also evidence that the regime stage-managed at least some of them, see for example defector general Ahmed Tlass’s account: http://www.noria-research.com/2014/04/28/syria-testimony-of-general-ahmed-tlass-on-the-regime-and-the-repression/).

Furthermore, when getting back to trying to understand the issue here – why many Islamist forces are better armed than secular FSA forces – the biggest contrast is not in fact secular fighters versus Islamists, but the majority (secular and mainstream Islamists) versus the jihadist/al-Qaida forces. And the reason the latter are better armed than most has absolutely nothing to do with the fantasy of arms from their arch-enemies in the Gulf monarchies. Rather, their key strength is that the flow of arms and money to these jihadists from the anti-monarchial Gulf bourgeois opposition is facilitated by al-Qaida in Syria being an extension of al-Qaida in Iraq, which exists just across the open Syria-Iraq border in Iraq’s Sunni Anbar province. Thus with arms, organisation, infrastructure, cadres etc directly flowing between Iraq and Syria, we can say that the most clearly and violently sectarian part of the Islamist opposition is also the section which arose the least organically within Syria, but is also the section which is the least associated with the Gulf monarchies.

Saudi reaction to MB and jihadists: Turn secular!

The Saudi monarchy was now thus at a curious juncture. Opposed to the democratic revolution, it originally supported Assad, unconcerned with sectarian issues or even its rivalry with Iran. As the Sunni solidarity wave swept the region, the monarchy was drawn in to “support” it in order to not lose it; which coincided with the need to undermine the democratic thrust of the uprising by giving it a Sunni coloration, even if the regime didn’t initiate it; and as Iran was also drawn in, on the other side, this thus reignited regional rivalry with Iran and made it more of a zero-sum game for the Saudis geopolitically.

However, the radicalisation of that Sunni wave had now given rise to a third and fourth Saudi enemy (after democratic revolution and Shiite/Iranian sectarian/geopolitical opponent): the MB-linked militias backed by Qatar, and now the rise of these anti-Saudi jihadist groups, including Jabhat al-Nusra – the whole of Syria looked like a mass mobilisation, on all sides, of mortal enemies of the House of Saud.

Hemmed in by the wrong kinds of Sunni Islamists, it may be surmised that the Saudis would find some “national”, non-al-Qaida-linked, Salafists to support as a wedge between the moderate Brotherhood and the radical jihadists, without the “international revolutionary” pretensions of either. An obvious choice could be the “national-jihadist” Ahrar al-Sham (AaS), set up in early 2012. Yet evidence for any Saudi support for AaS is remarkably thin. The fact is that AaS is one of the militias whose major funders are well-known, as Pierret explains, “it has been funded from the onset by the politicized wing of the Kuwaiti Salafi movement” whose leading ideologue Hakim al-Mutayri “holds views that are particularly abhorrent to Saudi rulers, namely a curious mixture of political liberalism, Jihadi-like anti-Westernism, and hostility to Gulf regimes” (http://mideastafrica.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/08/09/external_support_and_the_syrian_insurgency), and so unlikely to be of much use to the Saudis. Even less so given that, despite AaS’s vocal criticism of JaN for its links to al-Qaida, this has never stopped it from engaging in very active collaboration with JaN, and for a time even ISIS, on the ground.

What all this meant is that, from around July 2012, Saudi Arabia, while cracking down on Salafist networks in the kingdom that were finding the Syrian opposition, and pulling back on whatever support it may have been providing some small Islamist groups, swung right over to directing all support through the official opposition secular military and political bodies. From December 2012 this meant all military support was to go through the Supreme Military Command (SMC) of the FSA and all political support directed to the Syrian Opposition Coalition (SOC), when they were both set up with strong Saudi support; and this support came in via Jordan in the south as opposed to Qatar’s northern base in Turkey.

While it may sound surprising that the Saudis were backing the secular leadership, it is fully in tune with the massive Saudi support for the al-Sisi’s Egyptian “secular” coup against Morsi’s MB regime in mid-2013. As Pierret explains: “Saudi Arabia does not only despise the Muslim Brothers, but political Islamic movements and mass politics in general, which it sees as a threat to its model of absolute patrimonial monarchy. Saudi policies are not driven by religious doctrines, as is too often assumed, but by concerns for the stability of the kingdom, which translate into support for political forces that are inherently conservative or hostile to Islamist movements” (http://mideastafrica.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/08/09/external_support_and_the_syrian_insurgency). The reason Saudi Arabia cannot support al-Sisi’s equivalent in Syria, ie Assad, is only due to sectarian reasons, so it therefore it aims to achieve the same via co-opting defected former Baathist, secular Sunni, military officers that head the SMC (Ironically for the Saudis, al-Sisi, their man in Egypt, soon became a major backer of Assad!).

Regarding the jihadists, Pierret rightly notes that “the idea that Gulf monarchs may support the franchise of an organization – i.e. al Qaeda – that brands them as apostates and waged an armed insurgency on Saudi soil a decade ago does not make sense,” and similarly, a decade earlier, the early 1990s, saw the Sawha (Awakening) insurgency against the Saudi rulers led by allies of the MB (not to be confused with the unrelated US- and Saudi-backed Sunni movement in Iraq using this same name that confronted al-Qaida late last decade).

This is all the more important when one takes the time to look at a map, and note the closeness of the Saudi, Jordanian, Iraqi and Syrian borders. Like Saudi Arabia, Jordan is a monarchy, but one so far little affected by the Arab uprisings; as a fellow monarchy next door, Saudi Arabia wants to keep it that way. And the Jordanian monarchy’s main opposition is the Muslim Brotherhood, and so would be threatened by a new Syrian regime involving the Brotherhood or related Islamists, let alone by jihadist victories, a contagion whose next stop would likely be Saudi Arabia.

Talk of past Saudi promotion of Sunni sectarianism and “Wahhabism” at other times and in other places, for example support for the Taliban in distant, non-Arab Afghanistan, or perhaps in Chechnya, is thus irrelevant to the issue at hand.

So who exactly has Saudi Arabia been supporting in Syria since about mid-2012? A curious mixture, all of which have one thing in common: none are political Islamists. This includes:

1. Small brigades of “apolitical” or “quietist” Salafis aligned with the Saudi religious establishment, such as the Ahl al-Athar Battalions (which Pierret says is funded from Kuwait by the quietist Heritage Association) and the Nur al-Din Zanki Battalions (which apparently passed through other Islamist groups such as Tawhid until the Saudis were able to split them away). This means Salafis who have no political pretensions whatsoever, and who only push their ideology in the social field; they believe the world of politics is for non-religious bodies, in other words their ideology replicates precisely the Saudi model. This means that they work within the FSA, and their Saudi-backed coalition, the Front for Authenticity and Development (FAD), whose political platform is “strikingly unambitious and presents no distinctly Islamist feature” (http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/08/09/external_support_and_the_syrian_insurgency), and also incorporated some early defector officers and tribal groups aligned with the Saudis. All in all however, the FAD likely has several thousand troops, one of the smaller bodies among the Syrian rebels.

2. An idiosyncratic coalition the Saudis supported within the exile-based Syrian Opposition Coalition (SOC) against the Qatar- and MB-backed forces, including the liberal-secular Christian and long-term dissident Michael Kilo; Ahmed Jarba, also a secular figure from the Shummar tribal group (which stretches into Saudi Arabia), and member of the Revolutionary Council of Syrian Tribes; and liberal Islamist Ahmad Tomeh. Saudi Arabia backed such people taking a more prominent role in the opposition political leadership after the SOC was launched in December 2012, to expand political leadership beyond the SNC, which was seen as dominated by the Qatari-backed MB. The Saudis appear to have no ideological connection with such people, and only see them as a bulwark against their rivals. While Qatar got its Brotherhood-aligned Ghassan Hitto up as prime minister of the SNC, the Saudis eventually managed to depose him and replace him with Jarba and Tomeh. The alliance with Jarba may have a tribal connection, his tribe stretching from Syria across parts of Jordan into Saudi Arabia.

3. The Saudis began moving their main support among the military opposition to various defected ex-Baathist military officers, ie, what we might call “power secularists,” both the secular leaders of the exile-based SMC and various other officer-defectors, as Pierret notes, “among the least religious component of the rebel leadership.” Pierret notes the early Saudi courting of defector officers such as Abd al-Razzaq Tlass, and explains that “Riyadh has been the driving force behind several initiatives aimed at organizing the insurgency under the aegis of defector officers rather than of the civilian volunteers that run most Islamist groups: General Mustafa al-Sheikh’s Revolutionary Military Council, General Hussein al-Hajj Ali’s Syrian National Army, the Joint Command of the Military Councils, and General Salim Idriss’s Headquarters of the Free Syrian Army” (ie, the SMC) (http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/08/09/external_support_and_the_syrian_insurgency).

It is also interesting to note what happened to Adnan al-Ar’ur with this Saudi turn. Apparently, from preacher he did begin to run his own “mini-insurgency,” and many rebels complained about “the havoc these militants were causing.” Now however, he “was prevailed upon to give up his own war and publicly back an initiative to incorporate the main FSA blocs under a single, joint command” (ie the SMC) (https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/commentaryanalysis/the-southern-front). Yet since that time, little has been heard of him.

Implications of Saudi support to secular opposition

There are a number of interesting implications of the Saudi support to the secular Syrian opposition.

First, since most western leftists rightly want to emphasise support to the “democratic, secular” wing of the opposition as opposed to “Islamist” forces, the idea that a tyrannical monarchy with an ultra-puritanical internal Islamist social policy could be on the same side may feel uncomfortable; that’s why it is more comforting to believe the Saudis back elements that they do not.

However, the problem here is not viewing these issues in class terms. Certainly it is correct, in general, to express support for those forces advocating a democratic, secular outcome (as long as this is not done in secular-chauvinist style that views all Syrian Islamists as the same thing, a view that snubs the peasant and poor working class base of the Islamist groups). But while moderate Islamism can rightly be seen as a bourgeois or petty bourgeois ideology, let’s be clear: so is the secular Arab nationalist ideology of the defector officers and main political opposition. The class division between regime and resistance is abundantly clear; but there is no working class or socialist leadership in Syria. The Saudis thus aim to do something not terribly original: “support” the secular wing of the resistance via the bourgeois leaderships of it, in the hope of co-opting the leadership, just as progressives can support the same movement from the complete opposite point of view.

In fact, not only does this correspond to Saudi support to the secular Mubarak and secular Sisi against the MB, but to Saudi policy more generally. Especially relevant in Syria’s case is the fact that the Saudis’ key allies in Lebanon next door are the secular Sunni-based ‘Future’ movement of the Hariris, which is allied with the right-wing Christian-based Lebanese Forces – not the kind of allies that would look happily at too much Sunni jihadism next door in Syria. In fact, when the jihadist Palestinian group Fatah al-Islam appeared in Lebanon back in 2007, the “Sunni” Hariri regime waged a vicious war to crush it, to the point of acting the same way as Assad is currently acting towards Palestinian camps in Syria: Hariri pummelled the Tripoli Palestinian camp where FaI had embedded itself (as an aside: Hezbollah at the time, quite rightly, condemned this state terror, a sharp contrast to its current attitude to Syria).

Of course, one might say that Mubarak, Sisi and Hariri are well-established reactionary secular leaders, whereas here we are talking about a popular uprising. In that case, more relevantly, Saudi policy in Syria corresponds to Saudi support for the right-wing secular al-Fatah leadership of the PLO against the MB-linked Hamas within the Palestinian liberation movement. In my view, this does not make the whole organisation of historic nationalist Fatah a Saudi pawn – far from it – but the Saudis have co-opted the right-wing PA leaders who are now dominant over some of the more leftist and nationalist forces within Fatah.

The second issue is that, if Saudi Arabia is not promoting sectarian war in Syria, then where does this leave the role of Saudi-Iranian rivalry in Syria? Doesn’t Saudi Arabia still want to win a geopolitical victory against Iran in Syria (given the rivalry also manifests itself in Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon), and wouldn’t this necessitate some kind of “Sunni” victory? The simple answer is that some kind of “Sunni” victory or at least strengthening of position can be achieved without “sectarian war” and support for Sunni extremists. After all, in Lebanon, the Saudi card is the secular Sunni ‘Future’ Movement of the Hariris, not some group of radical Salafis. Given Sunnis are the Syrian majority and that any rearrangement of the regime, even the US-preferred conservative rearrangement, would necessitate greater Sunni input, and Saudi Arabia could present this as a victory.

Indeed, the Saudi mouthpiece al-Arabiya explained earlier this year that a Sunni prime minister with real power – even with Assad remaining in some capacity – would suit Saudi interests, a strikingly non-radical proposal. The article claimed the US and the Saudis “see that Syrian President al-Assad is not going to capitulate anytime soon” so “the Saudis see Assad ultimately becoming the Queen of England while the prime minister, whoever that will be—most likely a Sunni—will hold real power; a scenario the Saudi’s were originally seeking in the first place.” Notably, it also stressed that the first project of this new “type of confessional state” would be “to eradicate al-Qaeda completely” (http://english.alarabiya.net/en/2014/02/23/Saudi-Arabia-offers-U-S-solutions-over-Syria.html).

The final implication of Saudi policy of support for secularists is related to the original issue, the claim that the secular FSA is losing out to Islamists because the alter get plenty of arms from the Gulf states, while the FSA doesn’t. If in fact Saudi Arabia has been arming the secular defector officers, then why doesn’t this allow the secular forces to be stronger vis-à-vis the Islamists?

This can be answered in three ways. First, the fact that actual Saudi and Qatari support to any wing of the insurgency has been much less than is often assumed; second, the secular US has blocked as much as possible the arming of the secular opposition by the Saudis; and finally, the secular wing of the FSA is by no means as dead as the imperialist media and the pro-Assad conspiracists have been telling us for years.

First, the abundance of reports from the ground, where fighters report getting none of the weapons that various states have allegedly sent, or only getting them in dribs and drabs, applies to both moderate Islamist militias as well as secular ones. The fact that the Saudis mostly fund secular forces doesn’t mean they get very much. In general, it is mostly the jihadists that reportedly have better weapons. What’s more, as has been widely reported elsewhere, the Saudi-Qatari rivalry has tended to make the organisation of getting arms to various rebel groups ineffective and chaotic. Further, the way analysts talk about Gulf states, or others, getting weapons to either secular or Islamist militias inside the country, often sounds as if Saudi or Qatari officials can simply cross the Syrian border and find the address of the militia they like. The reality is that funds and arms have to be directed to outside bodies, such as the SMC, based in Jordan or Turkey, and then arms get in via a number of arms dealers. While a funding state may direct the dealer to a particular group, a great deal happens in between, including corruption, theft, the preferences of these dealers, being killed or captured etc. Small wonder the rebels on the ground report getting little.

For example, in an article reporting that some 3500 tons of military equipment had allegedly been brought to Turkish and Jordanian bases by Qatari and Saudi planes, we read from the ground:

“Still, rebel commanders have criticized the shipments as insufficient, saying the quantities of weapons they receive are too small and the types too light to fight Mr. Assad’s military effectively. They also accused those distributing the weapons of being parsimonious or corrupt. “The outside countries give us weapons and bullets little by little,” said Abdel Rahman Ayachi, a commander in Soquor al-Sham, an Islamist fighting group in northern Syria. He made a gesture as if switching on and off a tap. “They open and they close the way to the bullets like water,” he said.” Two other commanders, Hassan Aboud of Soquor al-Sham and Abu Ayman of Ahrar al-Sham, another Islamist group, said that whoever was vetting which groups receive the weapons was doing an inadequate job. “There are fake Free Syrian Army brigades claiming to be revolutionaries, and when they get the weapons they sell them in trade,” Mr. Aboud said” (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/25/world/middleeast/arms-airlift-to-syrian-rebels-expands-with-cia-aid.html?_r=0&adxnnl=1&pagewanted=all&adxnnlx=1399633250-rNCneHJq7CNq0W7aulE6SA).

Second, one reason this Saudi shift did little to help the fortunes of the secular fighters was the fact, ironic as it may sound, that the “secular” US applied massive pressure on the “fundamentalist’ Saudis to restrict any support to any section of the resistance, even the most secular. Last July, the reporter Joanna Paraszczuk explained that a US-Saudi conflict has been going on for some time:

“While Saudi Arabia has built up large stockpiles of arms and ammunition (in Jordan) for the Free Syrian Army, the US blocked shipments until last Thursday. The US and the Saudis are involved in a multilateral effort to support the insurgency from Jordanian bases. But, according to the sources, Washington had not only failed to supply “a single rifle or bullet to the FSA in Daraa” but had actively prevented deliveries, apparently because of concerns over which factions would receive the weapons. The situation also appears to be complicated by Jordan’s fears that arms might find their way back into the Kingdom and contribute to instability there. The sources said the Saudi-backed weapons and ammunition are in warehouses in Jordan, and insurgents in Daraa and Damascus could be supplied “within hours” with anti-tank rockets and ammunition. The Saudis also have more weapons ready for airlift into Jordan, but US representatives are preventing this” (http://eaworldview.com/2013/06/23/syria-special-the-us-saudi-conflict-over-arms-to-insurgents).

What is behind this US pressure we will look at in the second part of this series, when dealing specifically with the US role.

Third, while the thesis that secular militias have been weakened by relative lack of arms compared to jihadist militias, and that the Islamist wing of the resistance as a whole has eclipsed the size of the purely secular FSA, is true, this should not be confused with the imperialist and left-conspiracist lie that the secular FSA is dead or tiny. There are many tens of thousands of basically secular FSA forces, as I have documented, based on a variety of sources, elsewhere (eg, https://mkaradjis.wordpress.com/2013/09/24/report-on-relative-strength-of-armed-rebels-in-syria/).

The two parts of the country where the secular FSA is at its strongest are the south – the region from the Jordanian border, through Daraa, where the revolution began, to the working class “suburbs” of outer Damascus – and the northwest, the Idlib-Hama region. And it is in these two regions that the Saudis are well-known to be supporting the FSA. Of course, as shown above, this support is restricted; and it is certainly not only the Saudi factor that has allowed the FSA to maintain strength in those regions. However, to the extent that the Saudis have been able to defy the US, the weapons they have got across the border have certainly helped. For example, in early 2013 the Saudis got some Croatian weapons though to the SMC-allied forces in the south; while out-of-date and limited in number, it did help improve the fortunes of the secular forces on the southern front, which on the whole have remained consistently better than in the north and east; indeed here they still strongly outnumber the Islamist forces as a whole.

In Idlib in the northwest, it has been widely reported that the Syrian Martyrs’ Brigade (SMB), one of the largest secular FSA militias in the country, is Saudi-funded; and in Idlib, the balance between the SMB and the mainstream Islamist Suquor al-Sham (with possible Qatari-MB connections) has been maintained throughout the war. In fact, the SMB was one of the major components of the new Syrian Revolutionaries Front (SRF), a kind of north-western sub-FSA coalition set up late last year, with probably over 20,000 troops, which played a leading role in the joint rebel attack on ISIS beginning in January 2014.

Gulf crackdown on Islamist fighters headed for Syria

A final point exploding the myth of Gulf state support for radical Islamists in Syria is the continuous crack-down on these fighters in these states.

Saudi Arabia has led the way. In March, a Saudi court sentenced 13 men to up to 14 years in prison “for security offences including material support to wanted Islamist militants, aiding terrorism and helping young men go to Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan to fight,” the article noting that Saudi Arabia “has sentenced thousands of its citizens to prison terms for similar offences over the past decade” (http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/20/saudi-militants-idUSL6N0MH1K720140320?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=*Mideast%20Brief&utm_campaign=Mideast%20Brief%203-20-14). Since then, the kingdom officially added the Muslim Brotherhood to al-Qaida and Hezbollah as “terrorist” organisations banned in the country; “moral or material support for such groups would incur prison terms of five to 30 years, while travelling overseas to fight would be punishable by sentences of three to 20 years.” The Saudi regime even threatened Qatar with a land, sea and air blockade for its support for the MB, and alongside Bahrain and the UAE, suspended diplomatic relations with Qatar.

The Saudi crack-down on the MB has also pressured other Gulf states to do the same, especially Kuwait with its generally more liberal internal atmosphere (http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/03/muslim-brotherhood-kuwait-saudi-terror.html?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=*Mideast%20Brief&utm_campaign=Mideast%20Brief%203-12-14#). Already in 2013, Kuwait had issued new laws criminalising “terrorist financing,” whereby “banks will be required to note down the personal details of all their clients as well as anyone making an international transfer of more than 3,000 KD ($10,500). To help track and investigate misdeeds, the Central Bank will build a new Financial Intelligence Unit with the help of experts at the IMF” (http://mideastafrica.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/12/04/shaping_the_syrian_conflict_from_kuwait).

Despite these new laws, in April, “in a remarkably undiplomatic statement that officials said had been cleared at senior levels, (US) Treasury Undersecretary David S. Cohen called Kuwait “the epicenter of fundraising for terrorist groups in Syria”,” underscoring how relatively unregulated the situation is in Kuwait compared to the tighter control of financial flows in other Gulf monarchies – and the level of US hostility to any Gulf support to Syrian Islamists (http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/kuwait-top-ally-on-syria-is-also-the-leading-funder-of-extremist-rebels/2014/04/25/10142b9a-ca48-11e3-a75e-463587891b57_story.html).

Also in April, the Jordanian parliament passed a bill granting authorities “greater powers to detain without trial people suspected of affiliation with terrorist groups” while also criminalising “the intent or act of joining, recruiting, funding or arming terrorist organizations inside or outside Jordan.” The bill was clearly aimed at Jordanian Islamists who slip across the border to fight in Syria, “whom officials deem a major national security threat.” Since December, 120 suspected fighters have been arrested as foreign enemy combatants in the military-run state security court, and more than 40 have been convicted. “Right now, any Jordanian who goes to fight in Syria is arrested upon his return to the country and sent to the court,” said government spokesman Mohammed Momani (http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/worried-about-terror-attacks-at-home-jordan-steps-up-arrests-of-suspected-syria-jihadists/2014/04/25/6c18fa00-c96d-11e3-95f7-7ecdde72d2ea_story.html?wprss=rss_middle-east).

The US position: They should all kill each other

A second part of this article will give an update on the US role in all this. While this would be a useful enough issue in itself, the connection here is the possible contention that not only the Gulf monarchies, but the US itself, may also secretly support the Islamists over the secular opposition in order to detract the revolution from its democratic impulse and divide the masses. However, as I have shown that, however logical it may sound, this has not been the role of the Gulf monarchies overall, then there can be no question of the US supporting the Gulf on this. However, even to the extent that the Gulf monarchies have partially funded moderate Islamist movements at different times, and are at least partially amenable to trying to co-opt and control them, the US has always remained relentlessly opposed – indeed the big public spat between the US and Saudi Arabia in the second half of 2013 had much to do with the refusal of the US to arm anyone – secular or Islamist. However, to the extent that the US has offered to perhaps send a few arms to some highly vetted “moderate” rebels it has always been precisely on the basis that they use such arms to launch an all-out war on the jihadists – the US strategy being to let all wings of the anti-Assad resistance kill each other.