Ashes of Hama: the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria
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RAPHAËL LEFÈVRE Ashes of Hama The Muslim Brotherhood in Syria A A Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Copyright © 2013 by Oxford University Press Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 Published in the United Kingdom in 2013 by C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd. www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lefèvre, Raphaël. Ashes of Hama : the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria / Raphaël Lefèvre. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-19-933062-1 (alk. paper) 1. Jam’iyat al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin (Syria)—History. 2. Syria—History—20th century. 3. Syria—History—21st century. I. Title. BP10.J386L44 2013 322.4’2095691—dc23 2013014739 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed in India on Acid-Free Paper CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix Prologue xi PART I POLITICIZING ISLAM (1860–1963) 1. The Emergence of a Politicized Islam in Syria (1860–1944) 3 The “Damascus school”: the Salafiyya movement in Syria 4 Politicizing Islam: the rise of the “Islamic populists” 11 2. Islam and Democracy: The Muslim Brotherhood in Post- independence Syria (1946–1963) 19 Egyptian roots 20 The Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood 23 Competing for power in Syria’s parliamentary democracy 27 Defending Islam with pragmatism 30 “‘Islamic socialism’: a Muslim drink in a Marxist cup” 33 Losing ground to the Ba’ath Party 37 PART II THE ISLAMIC OPPOSITION TO BA’ATHISM (1963–1982) 3. The Islamic Reaction to the Ba’athist Revolution 43 A clash of ideologies 44 v CONTENTS A clash of constituencies 49 The ideological failure of Ba’athism 54 Urban uprisings 56 4. “A Minority Cannot Forever Rule a Majority” 63 Sunnis and Alawis: a history of mistrust 64 The “revenge of a minority”? 67 The “Alawization” of the Syrian regime: myth or reality? 70 Atmosphere of sectarian civil war 74 PART III THE RISE OF JIHADISM IN LATE 1970s SYRIA (1963–1982) 5. The Radicalization of the Islamic Movement (1963–1980) 81 The moderation of the Damascus Ikhwan 82 The split in the “Damascus wing” 88 The radicalization of the Islamic movement 96 Birth of an extremist organization: the Fighting Vanguard 101 6. Endorsing Jihad Against The Ba’ath (1980–1982) 109 State repression 110 The Muslim Brotherhood’s jihad 115 A last stand: the Hama uprising 122 A “Camp David conspiracy”? 129 PART IV ASHES OF HAMA: THE SYRIAN ISLAMIST MOVEMENT SINCE 1982 7. Militant Islam After Hama 137 Al-Qaeda: the Syrian connection 138 The Syrian mukhabarat and radical Islam: a blowback? 147 Taming political Islam 154 8. Struggling for Relevance: The Muslim Brotherhood’s Exile 161 Divided between the “Hama clan” and the “Aleppo faction” 162 Back to basics: the ideological evolution 170 Engaging with the Syrian opposition 174 9. Uprisings in Syria: Revenge on History 181 Fostering Islamic radicalization 182 vi CONTENTS The Brotherhood’s rebirth from ashes 187 Back to Syria: opportunities and challenges 194 Epilogue 201 APPENDICES Appendix 1: List of the successive leaders of Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood 209 Appendix 2: Abdullah Azzam on the role of Marwan Hadid during the 1964 Hama riots 211 Appendix 3: Abdullah Azzam on Marwan Hadid’s death 215 Appendix 4: Abu Mus’ab al-Suri on the training tactic of al-Talia al-Muqatila 219 Appendix 5: Abu Mus’ab al-Suri on the Battle of Hama in February 1982 221 Appendix 6: The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood’s most important statement regarding their evolution and their vision of Syria’s future 223 Notes 233 Index 263 vii This page intentionally left blank ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank all the people without whom this research project would not have become a reality. I am primarily indebted to Professor George Joffé who not only provided me with excellent supervision throughout my studies at the University of Cambridge but has also acted as an insightful adviser and a constant source of support ever since. My warmest thanks are also directed to Patrick Seale who, from the very beginning, supported my willingness to dig into Syria’s history and shed light on previously little-discussed aspects by providing much advice. I am also deeply indebted to Ignace Leverrier whose expert knowledge of Syrian political life helped to guide me through the maze of Ba’athist politics. Without his numerous contacts and the quality of the material he kindly provided me with, this study would not have been possible. The same is true of Ahmed al-Othman whose generosity is a key pillar upon which this book rests. His willingness to introduce me into the world of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood proved invaluable. In this respect, I am also thankful for the access I was granted to numerous leaders and rank-and-file members of the Islamist organization as well as their opponents from various fields—some of whom spoke on condi- tion of anonymity. This study owes much to their trust. I would also like to express my warmest gratitude and friendship to Mehdi Laghmari in Paris, Mohammed Laroussi and Hadia al-Attar in Aachen, Abdullah Ali, Walid Safour, Obeida Nahas and Malik al-Abdeh in London, Emira Bahri and Yassine in Tunis, and Ahmed al-Othman in Istanbul and Paris, who all contributed greatly to the publication of this book by expressing their readiness to help translate original material from Arabic. ix ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am also deeply grateful for Rana Kabbani’s friendship and her early encouragements both of which acted as important sources of inspira- tion. Additionally, many experts and critical readers gave insightful feedback on earlier drafts of this study. In this respect, I am particularly thankful to Dr Bente Scheller, Dr Nikolaos Van Dam, Professor George Joffé and Professor Philippe Droz Vincent for their time. Needless to say, any mistakes that remain are entirely my own. As this book went through several rounds of drafts and re-drafts, I am deeply grateful for all the time Anne Wolf, Anna Carden and Banu Turnaoglu spent reviewing earlier versions, giving substantial feedback. The staff at Hurst were also very helpful in this respect and in particular I owe much to Michael Dwyer who, by immediately giving his trust and confidence, made the publication of this book possible. The process of writing took a long time, however, and at times proved challenging. All my thanks go to Anne Wolf who, in addition to reading and editing successive drafts, also proved to be a constant and unyielding source of support. Finally, I would like to stress how much support I received from my family, whose sustained encouragement was a great source of motivation. x PROLOGUE When references to the advent of an “Arab Spring” started to emerge after popular uprisings toppled regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, many commentators suggested it was unlikely that this revolutionary Arab mood would reach Syria.1 They argued that the country’s collective con- sciousness was still profoundly marked by the so-called “Hama rules”2— that an authoritarian regime can crush an opposition movement with the application of force on a brutal scale as the Assad regime did in Hama to crush an Islamist rebellion.3 Throughout the month of Febru- ary 1982, the Ba’ath regime’s most loyal forces shelled entire quarters of the city and bombed many of its residential areas—leaving between 25,000 and 40,000 dead. Analysts were right to point out the significance of the memory of the massacre in the hearts and minds of the Syrian people. What they failed to foresee, however, was that this collective scar would not forever restrain Syrians from defying the regime that rules over them. Instead, it would fuel such a degree of resentment and anger that the uprisings which started in March 2011 at Dar’a soon spread throughout the coun- try with ever increasing pace and intensity. In virtually every Syrian city, the message of local opposition leaders and protest organizers soon boiled down to a simple sentence: “We will not let the massacres of 1982 be repeated!”4 xi PROLOGUE Uprisings in Syria: the burden of history Soon, however, these Syrians must have felt as if they were reliving their own history. In February 2012 Bashar al-Assad’s younger brother Maher ordered a three week artillery siege of the Baba Amr quarter in Homs which left thousands of inhabitants dead—much as Hafiz al-Assad’s regime henchmen had done to Hama exactly thirty years before. The memory of atrocities suffered in the early 1980s by Syria’s Islam- ists at the hands of the regime seemed to be an increasingly important mobilizing factor in the uprisings. A journalist, reporting on the revolt from northern Syria, observed: “A village elder with a handgun strapped to his side […] said he was arrested [in the late 1970s] as part of the regime’s crackdown on suspected Muslim Brothers and served 15 years in prison.