The future (or lack thereof) of Hamas in Syria
Issandr El Amrani | Syria hamas Good reporting from Tobias Buck in the FT on Hamas' predicament in Syria:
The Syrian leader is outraged that Hamas, a movement he has sponsored and nurtured for years, is refusing to back his regime against the uprising that started earlier this year. Relations are reportedly at breaking point.
Fearful of retribution, and alarmed by the collapse of order, Hamas has evacuated many of its lower-level officials from Syria. “We feel that the situation is very dangerous for Hamas in Syria,” admitted one Gaza-based Hamas official. “They [the Assad regime] are very angry with us, they want us to give support just like Hizbollah [the Lebanese Shia movement] did. But this is impossible for Hamas. The Syrian regime is killing its own people.”
Hamas leaders are keenly aware it can be dangerous to pick the wrong side. “No one wants to make the mistake that [former Palestinian leader Yassir] Arafat made in Kuwait,” said Mostafa Alsawaf, the editor of Alresalah, a pro-Hamas newspaper in the Gaza Strip.
Arafat backed Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1991, and after Iraq’s defeat Kuwait took revenge by expelling some 450,000 Palestinian expatriate workers. Syria is home to about 500,000 Palestinian refugees and their descendants – a potentially huge target for retribution.
The article goes on to note that neither possible alternative headquarters for the Hamas leadership, Egypt and Qatar, are ready to take them in. But that might change, in time, since the movement has friends there.
Last week, flying back from a trip in Rome, I noticed a group of of men dressed in suits with closely-cropped beards and Syrian flag pins on their lapels. Some seemed to be bearing Turkish travel documents — not a passport, but the kind of documents a country might give people without travel documents from their own countries, like political refugees. They spoke Shami Arabic. I suspect they were Syrian Muslim Brothers visiting Cairo.
One thing you can give Hamas credit for (unlike Hizbullah) is that they took a courageous decision not giving support to Assad. It's a dangerous one as the Syrian regime gets increasingly desperate.
Reader Comments (5)
The decision to welcome Hamas to Cairo will be a critical one for the MB, if indeed they will have the ability to do so. While the West can warm to the MB of Egypt in principle as winners of democratic elections, taking in Hamas - widely understood as a terrorist group - will have reputation spoiling complications. Cries of 'true colors' will rain down on them. No matter the legitimacy of their resistance, rockets do fly indiscriminately from Gaza. Does the MB want this on its hands?
Hamas is not considered a terrorist group by pretty much everybody in the Arab world. The rockets are understood to be part of a strategy of national resistance and are legitimate (and more often than not, retaliation for Israeli attack.)
Quote from the text: "One thing you can give Hamas credit for (unlike Hizbullah) is that they took a courageous decision not giving support to Assad. It's a dangerous one as the Syrian regime gets increasingly desperate."
I would see it the other way around: Hezbollah was honest when it was talking about friendship with Syria and its regime and they don't opportunistically change this position as soon as the wind turns its direction. Furthermore Hezbollah is differentiated enough to see both sides of the coin: Syria is in fact an exeption in terms of the violence of the opposition. Since the very beginning of the protest you found armed groups killing people (what explains the above the ordinary number of death securtiy forces in Syria). So it is not so obvious who the "goods" are and who the "bads" as it was the case in Egypt or Tunesia. And it is far more brave by Hezbollah (and also Iran) not to abandon a friend, only because all the world is doing so, including the Arabs (who suddenly became freedom loving doves), the West and partially the UN. Hezbollah very well knows about the negative consequences on its image as a "Moqawama" and still it has chosen to stay loyal (and again: despite the unquestioned fact that the Syrian Regime has a lack of legitimaty and attractivenes for its people, the violent "opposition", which is supportet by the West is not an inch better). It is Hezbollah who deserves those credits in this situation and it has proven to be a trustworthy partner. Hamas has - and I would assume that it has done this after fatal consultation of its brethern from the very radical and rather Salafi Mulsim Brotherhood in Syria - taken the opportunistic path in chosing not to stay loyal to a long lasting friend, only because they erroneously think he would fall soon.
Very much disagree with Le Mec. For starters, the Syrian demonstrators like all the others started out very peaceful and it was the regimes gangs who quickly tried to sow sectarian seeds of hatred often sending the same goons to attack different neighborhoods pretending to be one ethnicity of goons and then the other. If anything, the uprising there has been much slower to turn violent than that in Libya. In this mix, Hizbullah may have stuck by their old Syrian regime buddies, but it would appear this is mostly a bet on the survival of the regime (they have not suffered the kinds of desertions many other falling regimes have for example) along with the necessity for Hizbullah of the regime's channels for logistics. To me this smacks of a monumental mistake. Hizbullah had been very popular inside Syria, and now they risk alienating a large portion of the populace, making continued support by Syria much less likely if the regime does fall. They would have been much smarter to recognize how reckless the Ba'ath have turned and just shut up in public. Quiet messages to the regime saying "don't worry, we're with you, but sorry we're in a tough position and have to be silent publicly" would have been the best. The Ba'athis might have been ticked about this, but if they came out the winners, Hizbullah is such a strong strategic asset for them that they would have mended fences quickly. And if the Ba'ath regime falls, Hizbullah's position with whatever system emerges may well have continued as before. I suppose that besides for betting on the survival of the regime, Hizbullah may also have been scared by the rise of Salafi trends inside Syria and sees them as a potential evil that has to be fought and can't be made peace with (very likely a correct calculation). So perhaps that is a driving force in their calculations.
Hamas on the other hand in the pre-uprisings world was simply acknowledging the old order's reality in housing themselves in a typical regional dictatorship. When all the governments from Morocco to Israel to Oman in the region were dictatorships, the best one could do would be to find one that had strategic common ground and house ones' self there. But with the uprisings and the very clear fact that the regime that allied with them is killing their own people wantonly, Hamas has been smart to steadily disassociate themselves despite the fact that this leaves them potentially homeless for their outside-Palestine headquarters. I do agree with Jayson that if an MB-led government gives them a base in Egypt, that the US and some EU states will freak out. This prospect alone and the potential cutoff of US military aid that might be threatened by Congress, would almost certainly induce SCAF to flex its muscles and shut the idea down. Alternatively, given the brewing MB-SCAF potential showdown over legislative versus executive powers, the MB and other populist forces might well think that such a popularly-supported idea might give them further muscle to enable their side in the domestic power struggle. Unless of course - as is likely sometime in the next year or two - an economic crisis of major proportions hits with the exhaustion of foreign exchange reserves, and everyone decides they have to put any major political initiatives (domestic and foreign policy) on hold while they sort out how to buy enough wheat and other basic goods to keep people from starving.
I'd expect some disconnect between the Western and Syrian media on whats happening in syria, but the two accounts are so divergent one has to be a SIGNIFICANT fabrication. The most anti-syrian reporting seems to come from the oil military base Qata, from rumored BBC front Al Jazeera followed by Murdoch's Fox and Sky News, hardly objective news outlets. Whats interesting is what they do admit to, which is funding and armign the Free Syrian Army, with logistical and military support from nato turkey. The most disturbing news item I guess to me was discussion of libyan rebel forces inside syria. So they his is where it gets surreal.
According to the west, the armed groups are defending protestors from attack by the syrian military. But eyewitnesses elsewhere claim there is no grass roots rebellion or massive protests, not surprising in a country with roaming bands of nato mercenaries. What does seem clear is that these rag tag groups suffer heavy casualties everytime they actually engage the syrian army. Most likely this is a large part of the death statistics, here foreign armed gangs being identified as protestors, which they are, of a sort.
More disturbing is the medical reports of civilian killings of random people by roaming sniper teams on roof tops. Im not an expert on counter insurgency, but Im not aware of any counter insurgency doctrine that utilizes random killing of civilians to win the hearts and minds of the people. On the other hand, this is classic US military doctrine on the use of special forces in insurgency (the Nato war inside syria). FM 7-98 emphasizes the use of snipers in urban insurgency. It calls for random attacks on individuals and the community (to provoke counterinsurgent over reaction and subsequent propaganda against the COIN regime ).
Given the admitted infiltration of armed groups into syria from nato, and nato's stated doctrine of employing random sniper attacks in urban insurgency, I find it difficult to believe Mudoch and Watar on whats happening insyria. There are random killings of civilians by urban snipers. It is highly unlikey the COIN counterinsurgency Assad regime would be the one employing these death squads.
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US ARMY FIELD MANUAL , INSURGENCY, APPENDIX A THE URBAN INSURGENT
A-2. INSURGENT TACTICS
A-2. INSURGENT TACTICS
The urban insurgent works alone or in small cells. His tactics are different from those of his rural counterpart to include the following:
b. Generating widespread disturbances designed to extend the resources of the COIN force. c. Creating incidents or massing crowds to lure the COIN force into a trap.
d. Provoking the COIN force into overreacting, which would provide hostile propaganda.
e. Provoking interfactional strife.
f. Sniping at roadblocks, outposts, sentries, and individuals.
g. Attacking vehicles and buildings with rockets and mortars.
h. Planting explosive devices, either against specific targets or at random, to cause confusion and destruction, and to lower public morale.
A-1. EFFECTS OF THE URBAN ENVIRONMENT
The urban insurgent can operate more boldly than his rural counterpart as reflected by his tactics. The sniper complements the more conventional ambush and often replaces it. Also, explosive devices can be used either as instruments against the community or more selectively against individuals or groups.