Syrian regime fakes supportive Roy interview

This is rather ludicrous. The acclaimed French Middle East specialist, Olivier Roy, famed for his "failure of political Islam" book, has issued a statement disowning an off-camera interview of him on France 2 that was rebroadcast on Syrian television. In the interview, Roy is heard saying "There is no doubt about this, Bashar al-Assad will be the first Arab leader who will win against the West," followed by a long praise of the Syrian president.

Except Roy never conducted any such interview on France 2 (or anywhere else). Syrian TV faked it.

See Roy's statement after the jump.

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Syrians dig in for long haul

From an excellent post on Syria Comment, in which a Syrian exile returns home and asks people about the uprising:

“What does the President have to do to gain your support from this point?” I ask. “It is too late. There is nothing” came the quick response”. How long will it take for the revolution to succeed and topple the regime? Four years came the quick response. Naturally, I act surprised. He makes a bet with me that it will be this long. The four years are needed before the country is truly starving and when even the 8-year old is forced to go  down onto the streets to join the protests. “Only then, will the regime fall,” was his explanation.

Read the whole thing, which is full of fascinating discussions with Syrians of various stripes.

Update: Separately, on the whole intervention debate, this is a very interesting long blog post over at Slouching Towards Columbia. I particularly like this bit that is quoted there:

John Quincy Adams said: “[America] goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.” This is commonly interpreted as isolationist, but there is a deeper meaning inherent in this statement: when it really comes down to the wire, you are the only one that can guarantee your own right to freedom, safety, and prosperity. Adams was not advocating that the United States refrain from engaging the world, but that the government remember while doing so that it serves American citizens rather than foreigners.

Also, see Charles Glass: Decades of foreign bumbling push Syrians towards war - The National

The Threat of Opportunity in Syria

A UN Security Council resolution draft came into the hands of The Guardian yesterday, condemning the ongoing violence in Syria and calling for Assad’s regime to take all necessary steps to effect a cease-fire and pursue power-sharing arrangements with opposition groups within 15 days of the resolution’s passage.

So where will the international community go from here if, as in Libya, the leading opposition movement comes out firmly in favor of foreign intervention to establish, at the very least, a no-fly zone over northern Syria to establish a base area for refugees and anti-Assad fighters?

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The regional diplomacy of Syria

Here's a little mix of links under the theme "Diplomacy on Syria as a subset of, Iran-Saudi/UAE/Qatar, Sunni-Shia rivalries and the US-Saudi-Israel alliance", a riff off Roula Khalaf's good analysis piece in the FT, Riyadh plays its hand over Syria:

Jamal Khashoggi, the prominent Saudi commentator, sees Syria policy now as part of “the war against Iran”, one strand of a multifaceted battle that includes Saudi support for the European oil embargo and western financial restrictions on the Islamic republic. Amid growing confidence that the kingdom has escaped the winds of change sweeping through the region, he adds, the attitude in Riyadh is “let’s get the most” out of the situation.

Yet no one in Riyadh is under any illusion about the complexity of the crisis in Syria – a country with a delicate sectarian balance and a strategic position in both the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Sunni Arab states’ power struggle with Shia Iran. The conflict on the ground, moreover, has become increasingly militarised as defectors challenge Mr Assad’s security forces, and the government loses control of parts of the country.

Saudi Arabia has now given fresh ammunition to western allies at the UN Security Council to push back against Russia, which has so far blocked action. The Arab League is asking the Security Council to adopt a peace plan that calls on Mr Assad to give powers to a vice-president and form a national unity government.

The rest of the links:

• Free Syrian Army 'captures Iranian soldiers' - Middle East - Al Jazeera English
• Gulf smugglers slow runs amid Iran tensions – USATODAY.com
• Iraq's Sunni-backed bloc to end parliament boycott - chicagotribune.com
• Army fights for Damascus suburbs - FT.com
• Aleppo sees first big outbreak of violence - FT.com
• BBC News - Syria's Assad will go, says US, as UN vote nears

[Thanks, PM]

On intervention in Syria

The shorter Steve Cook: Bashar al-Assad is massacring his own people, but the West doesn't want to intervene because they think he'll fall soon enough. He won't though, and while intervening is difficult, it's not as difficult as the conventional wisdom holds. It may have the added bonus fo the US to undermine Iran's regional position. That being said, post-Assad Syria might be a disaster.

The shorter Marc Lynch: Bashar al-Assad is massacring his own people, but a massacre is not enough ground to strike against a country, even if it may be part of the ground. Any form of military intervention, such as a no-fly zone, would quickly grow into something complicated that would draw the West in further. The Syrian opposition is not yet strong enough to provide a real alternative to the regime anyway. Beef up sanctions and go to the ICC first to isolate the regime further and provide a legal basis for more down the road.

My short take: I am always againt military intervention, humanitarian or otherwise, because of the experience of Iraq and because I believe in national sovereignty as the cornerstone of democracy and in respecting international law. I do not see Russia and China giving a go-ahead for UN-sanctioned intervention, nor do I see Arab unity over intervention in this case. That being said, we must be realistic about Syria: the conflict is likely to perdure and will probably draw in its neighbors – Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel. In other words, it is likely to internationalize. These countries (and in the case of Lebanon and Iraq, others working through them) may want to back a particular faction, or quarantine the conflict (which will have an impact on the belligerents, of course). What's more, fighters from those countries may very well want to join one side or the other (there have already been rumors of Iranians joining in on the regime side). In other words, foreign intervention will be a reality sooner or later. I'd rather it'd be done by Syria's neighbors then the West, even if that means it will be bloodier or even if it leads to Assad staying in power. Quite simply, it's none of our business.

The sad solipsism of Syria's protestors

I tweeted this yesterday, but think it's worth a second look. If you have ever lived in a place like Syria, you know it can be a very isolated place — isolated from the rest of the world because of its restrictions on foreign visitors, its political isolation from the rest of the world, trade barriers that mean that certain consumer goods (and hence fashions) are absent, and of course warped by the personality cult and brutal dictatorship. This translates into a very Eastern Bloc feel to Syria, sometimes comically expressed in the very old-fashioned haircuts and fashion.

This video really highlights the isolation of the Syrians — because the situation is confusing, because most media have a tough time covering the conflict, because there is an "Arab Spring weariness" in much of the world, because the consequences of the uprising there are regionally daunting. What's so moving about this scene is the protestors' need to be noticed, for the world to take note, to have an audience for their chants and slogans.

From Mar15.info, which notes:

Demonstrators in Bab Qibli in Hama city are watching themselves live on Aljazeera channel on a big screen. The regime has banned media from entering Syria and cut the Internet off most of the Syrian cities. The only way to get access to the Internet is by using devices that connect directly to satellites as activists have done in this video in Hama.

Mixed Messages from Syrian National Council on US, Israel

According to Reuters, the Syrian National Council and the National Coordination Body for Democratic Change in Syria - the two largest opposition coalitions in Syria - signed on the last Friday of 2011 a unity pledge that "reject[s] any military intervention that harms the sovereignty or stability of the country, though Arab intervention is not considered foreign." However, remarks delivered to the U.S. and Israeli press by a Council spokesman seem to contradict the Council's stated support for the new joint policy.

The rejection of (Western) military intervention is a significant concession on the part of the Syrian National Council - the smaller, more diaspora-oriented of the two main coalitions - as the Council had been calling for NATO to enforce a no-fly zone ("Safe Area for Syria"). The Council's representatives have compared the situation in Syria to that in Libya (as such, it is not surprising that the transitional government in Libya is the only foreign government to have formally recognized the Council). Those analyzing the feasibility and costs of such intervention argue that Syria's extensive air defense system and high population densities will make a no-fly zone difficult to enforce, leading to heavy civilian casualties and, ultimately, require major troop deployments.

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The future (or lack thereof) of Hamas in Syria

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.

Some notes on Syria

On this blog we focus on Egypt a lot because we live in Cairo. But it should be remembered that what's happening in Syria is way worse. Here are a few links.

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Meanwhile in Syria

We live in Egypt, and so focus there, but obviously this weekend major protests took place in Syria. It looks like it will get worse there before it gets better, though, if Anthony Shadid's latest report is accurate:

As it descends into sectarian hatred, Homs has emerged as a chilling window on what civil war in Syria could look like, just as some of Syria’s closest allies say the country appears to be heading in that direction. A spokesman for the Syrian opposition last week called the killings and kidnappings on both sides “a perilous threat to the revolution.” An American official called the strife in Homs “reminiscent of the former Yugoslavia,” where the very term “ethnic cleansing” originated in the 1990s.

“Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve seen sectarian attacks on the rise, and really ugly sectarian attacks,” the Obama administration official said in Washington. The longer President Bashar al-Assad “stays in power, what you see in Homs, you’ll see across Syria.”

Podcast #14: The Ones That Didn't Make It (Yet)

This week we discuss those Arab revolutions that are still in progress or are being stopped dead in their tracks: Yemen, Bahrain and Syria.

Links referenced in this week's podcast:

• In Translation: Fahmi Howeidy on Iran, Syria and Bahrain
• In The Lion's Den: An Eyewitness Account of Washington's Battle With Syria by Andrew Tabler

Podcast #14

In Translation: Fahmi Howeidy on Iran, Syria and Bahrain

We bring you another commentary piece from the Arab media in translation, courtesy of Industry Arabic, a  full-service translation company founded by two longtime Arabist readers, which specializes in English-Arabic-French technical, legal, and engineering translation management services.

Fahmi HoweidyThis week I selected an article by Fahmi Howeidy, a conservative Egyptian columnist who is widely believed to be the most influential pundit in the Arab world. Howeidy is well-connected and writes for multiple audiences (he is syndicated in Egyptian papers and several Gulf-owned ones). He has long championed a kind of elitist Islamo-populism which I personally abhor, but does have some resonance in the region. At his best, Howeidy is (was?) incredibly cutting of (some of) the regimes in place; at his worst he defends silly conspiracy theories and makes crude, unsupported attacks against his ideological enemies — including at times rather nasty personal attacks.

In recent years, Howeidy had been a defender of Iran in its standoff with Israel and the United States. As the author of several books about Iran with excellent access in Tehran, he consistently defended the Islamic Republic and its foreign policy. Even when the Hizbullah and the Iranian Republican Guards were said (plausibly) by the Mubarak regime to have operated an espionage network with links to Hamas in Gaza, Howeidy slammed the Egyptian regime. This shocked many at the time, since after all covert operations had been uncovered and public opinion tended to be critical of any foreign meddling. In other words, there was a time when, for Howeidy, Iran could do no wrong.

In the column below, Howeidy reports from a conference in Tehran and slams the Iranian stance on Syria, going as far as arguing that the Islamic Republic “has lost its moral compass.” He comes out strongly against the Assad regime and makes a compelling argument that what he had admired about Assad — his commitment to the “Resistance Front” against Israel and the United States’ imperial policies in the last decade — cannot take precedence over the regimes’ murdering of its own population, and that it further risks souring that population on supporting the Resistance Front. I recommend reading alongside Rami Khouri’s latest column, on the fall of Iran’s star in the Arab world this year. Howeidy’s take may be the surest sign of this trend. Finally, his equivocating on Bahrain in the latter part of the piece is also interesting — Howeidy is not quite ready to abandon the Bahraini royals, and their Gulf allies…

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Syria: Hama Attorney General resigns and details regime massacre, mass graves and cover-ups

Very powerful. More details form BBC.

Podcast #10: Libya and its consequences

We delayed this week's podcast to bring you two guests with expert knowledge of the Libyan war and its regional consequences: Steve Negus, who just returned from Tripoli and Benghazi, and Middle East correspondent for The Economist Max Rodenbeck. (Ashraf Khalil is off this week dealing with a looming book deadline.) We talk about why Tripoli fell so fast and how secure it is now, what might happen in Sirte and Sebha, the last Qadhafi strongholds, and what governance might look like in Libya for the foreseable future. We also discuss whether there is a Libyan model for humanitarian intervention, what it might mean for Syria, Qatar's steroid diplomacy, and still more. Finally, we discuss Libyan novelist Hisham Matar's novels and play a song from Libya's reggae-influenced pop music.

Links for this week's show:

• Libya: The birth of free Libya | The Economist 
• Colonel Qadhafi's Tech Support
• Will Sirte be the new Benghazi?
• Libya: do tribes matter?
• Libya: Can the rebels rule?
• Libya after Qadhafi
• Popular Protest in North Africa and the Middle East (V): Making Sense of Libya - International Crisis Group
• Issandr El Amrani · Is there a Libya? · LRB 28 April 2011
• Libyan Novelist Recounts His Father’s Abduction : The New Yorker
• The Book Bench: Hisham Matar on Libya : The New Yorker
• This is / was Misurata - Blog - The Arabist

As always, do write in to podcast [AT] arabist.net with your comments.

The Arabist Podcast #10

For Ali Ferzat

The above cartoon, in solidarity with Syrian cartoonist Ali Ferzat is by Jonathan Guyer of Mideast by Midwest. Ferzat, who has published cartoons critical of Bashar al-Assad, had his hands broken last week by pro-regime assailants: 

In the early hours of Thursday, masked men seized Ferzat from the street and forced him in to a van. A relative has said that Ferzat's attackers targeted his hands, breaking them both, and told him it was "just a warning" before leaving him by the roadside with a bag over his head.

Across the Middle East and elsewhere cartoonists have expressed solidarity with Ferzat.

Syria dispatch: The road to Qardaha

Hafez al-Assad's tomb at Qardaha

A British reader of this website who until recently lived in Syria sent in this dispatch, about his last few weeks in Damascus. 

The broad-shouldered middle-aged figure walked into the internet café and sat down in front of the manager. The black leather jacket and olive trousers – de rigueur in those circles – marked him out as a member of the Mukhabarat, Syria’s feared “secret” police. He wanted to know if anybody had been looking at opposition websites critical of the government.

“Not at all”, my friend said in Arabic, “we always look out for that kind of behaviour; in fact, on my screen here I can see everybody else’s computer so know straight away if they are doing something illicit,” at the same time closing the incriminating websites on his desktop. The policemen nodded approvingly and picked up the list – held by all Syrian internet cafes - that records the name, identity number and entry time of customers.

Before he left however, the operative had just one more question: he wanted to know how it was that young Syrians were able to find these websites in the first place? My friend began to apprise him of Google and its use as a search engine, this was clearly the first time he’d heard of this wondro

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Syrian Protesters using Russian flags?

A Russian flag in the center spotlight (click to enlarge)Early this week brazen pro-government mobs attacked the American and French embassies in Damascus. The assault left three French nationals injured and showed the increasing desperation of the Syrian regime in framing the narrative on unrest in Syria. The attacks have already drawn condemnation from the United States and the United Nations.

The attack was sparked by a visit from American Ambassador Robert Ford and his French counterpart, Eric Chevallier, to the city of Hama in central Syria last Friday. There they met with anti-government protesters who warmly greeted them.

One seemingly bizarre detail from reports of the riot suggests that the Russian flags were carried by some protesters mixed in of course with the pictures of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad and of course Syrian flags. 

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Adam Curtis on Syria

From the fabulous British documentary film-maker Adam Curtis' blog:

What is happening in Syria feels like one of the last gasps of the age of the military dictators. An old way of running the world is still desperately trying to cling to power, but the underlying feeling in the west is that somehow Assad's archaic and cruel military rule will inevitably collapse and Syrians will move forward into a democratic age.

That may, or may not, happen, but what is extraordinary is that we have been here before. Between 1947 and 1949 an odd group of idealists and hard realists in the American government set out to intervene in Syria. Their aim was to liberate the Syrian people from a corrupt autocratic elite - and allow true democracy to flourish. They did this because they were convinced that "the Syrian people are naturally democratic" and that all that was neccessary was to get rid of the elites - and a new world of "peace and progress" would inevitably emerge.

What resulted was a disaster, and the consequences of that disaster then led, through a weird series of bloody twists and turns, to the rise to power of the Assad family and the widescale repression in Syria today.

I thought I would tell that story.

A great story well told — read it all. And you should also watch Curtis' latest documentary, All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace.

Bashar al-Assad's eye chart

Bashar al-Assad studied ophthalmology in London in the 1990s. Via Michael Collins Dunn via Wael Ghonim.

What strikes me most about Assad's third speech

Bashar al-Assad just delivered his third public address since the uprising began in Syria. The previous speeches were cocky and confident, arrogant even. In this one he seemed uncomfortable and nervous, gone was the joking and swagger of a month ago. He even appeared to have lost some weight.

Assad offered a bunch of technocratic reforms: a new electoral law, a commitment to root out corruption, media reform, reform of municipal government, and the launch of a national dialogue for reform that will include 100 personalities. It was a technocrat's speech, not a leader or politician's speech, and he appeared rambling and perhaps even weak. Its contents were vague, and simply did not address the very serious crisis between the Syrian people and their state.

It's hard to interpret what this all means, because it was difficult to understand what Assad was pitching. He just didn't sell it, and we don't know who is supposed to big part of this national dialogue (although I've heard that longtime dissident Michel Kilo might be a part of it.) But it still feels too half-hearted, there was no grand gesture such as calling back security forces or addressing the refugee situation in Turkey (for instance by offering an amnesty and guarantees that they will be unharmed if they return and that the incidents that led to their flight will be investigated.)

It's very hard to judge from the outside where Syria is headed. This speech further muddles the picture, with Assad making a half-hearted conciliatory gesture that simply does not convince.