In a recent essay for Newlines Magazine, former U.S. ambassador to Syria Robert Ford discussed the ways in which the so-called Syrian revolution went wrong. He does so by recounting his interactions with two prominent Syrian opposition leaders, political activist and lawyer Razan Zeitouneh and Free Syrian Army (FSA) commander Colonel Abd al-Jabbar al-Akaidi.1 Ambassador Ford argues that the anti-government protestors’ goal of “a liberal, tolerant system of government guided by a democratic process” was never realized, in part because “we didn’t help them much in their cause.” More specifically, Ford argues that U.S. planners refused to provide weapons to the allegedly moderate elements of the armed insurgency fighting to topple the Syrian government. As result, Ford argues, extremists from the Syrian wing of al-Qaeda, known as the Nusra Front, were able to hijack the Syrian revolution from the moderates of the FSA.
Ford writes for example that he warned President Obama’s National Security Council in July 2012 that “if the United States didn’t help arm moderates like Akaidi and Afif, Nusra would eventually capture eastern Syria and link up with its homeboys in western Iraq,” but that the “president did not want to provide arms.” Ford writes further that, “The United States had been concerned that small arms provided to Akaidi’s fighters would fall into extremist hands in the heat of battle and had held back substantial aid for that reason. Yet by denying people like Akaidi significant support, we created a self-fulfilling prophecy. By late 2015, such leaders and their fighters had been overshadowed and eventually eliminated by groups spouting sectarian agendas and dismissing political negotiations out of hand, helped along by Turkey, Qatar, and the Syrian regime itself.”
In making his argument, Ford contends that the FSA brigades led by commanders such as Akaidi were moderate and constituted a separate and distinct wing of the insurgency that competed with the extremists from al-Qaeda. Ford writes that, “Akaidi in Aleppo and Col. Afif Soleiman in Idlib stressed that the Free Syrian Army would protect Alawites in territories they liberated. This was especially important because the Nusra Front, then an offshoot of al Qaeda in Iraq, was growing so strong in northern Syria that we decided to put it on the U.S. government terrorism list in December 2012 to warn the Free Syrian Army and the political opposition to avoid and even condemn it. Commanders like Akaidi and Soleiman were competing with the Nusra Front in late 2012 and early 2013 for recruits. Our meetings with representatives from coordination committees trying to manage towns in northern Syria abandoned by the Syrian Army indicated that the Nusra Front was gaining advantage over men like Akaidi and Soleiman. Nusra had, they warned, more money and supplies.”
Ford’s claims, that Syria’s protest movement unanimously demanded a liberal democratic government, that FSA groups were moderate, that U.S. officials refused to provide them weapons, and that this refusal led to the rise of al-Qaeda in Syria, are all false, however.
Christians to Beirut, Alawites to the Grave First, as I have detailed elsewhere, Syria’s early protests included both secular and Salafist elements. Salafist activists played a key role in the early protest movement and sought to mobilize Syria’s Salafist community to attend demonstrations they thought would topple the government. Muslim Brotherhood activists organized many of the early protests via Facebook, while protestors often expressed support for sectarian Salafist preachers Muhammad Sarour Zein al-Abbedine and Adnan Ar’our. Rhetoric at the protests always included demands for freedom, however democracy was not always mentioned. In contrast to secular activists such as Razan Zeitounah who viewed freedom as the right to live in a democracy, Salafist activists helping to organize protests viewed freedom as the right to live under a fundamentalist religious state and to have a Sunni Muslim, rather than an Alawite, as president. For this reason, early protest slogans calling for freedom were at times accompanied by sectarian slogans, including demands for the killing of Alawites and the expulsion of Christians to neighboring Lebanon.2 Who Were “Akaidi’s fighters?” Second, the Free Syrian Army (FSA) was not moderate. It was dominated by Salafist militias from the beginning. Salafist militias, including Kata’ib al-Farouq, Liwa al-Islam, Saqour al-Sham, and Liwa al-Tawhid formed the backbone of the FSA.3 These groups were not fighting for democracy or a secular state. Instead, they sought to use violence to establish a fundamentalist religious state.4 Salafist oriented FSA groups were often viewed as moderate by Western observers because these groups had no intention of carrying out attacks against Western targets. However, they were nevertheless not moderate from a Syrian perspective. Given their Salafist orientations, the major FSA groups were hostile both towards religious minorities and to fellow Sunni Muslims who did not share the Salafists’ innovative and fundamentalist interpretations of Islam. In other words, these FSA groups were hostile to most of the Syrian population. As Syrian dissident Nidal Nuaiseh has noted, “Salafist calls for the murder of Alawites are not new, but are at the core of the Salafist ideology, and have been at its core for hundreds of years.”5 In his essay, Ambassador Ford specifically claims that FSA commander Colonel Akaidi was a moderate. Ford fails to mention, however, that Akaidi was himself a commander in one of these Salafist militias, namely Liwa al-Tawhid, the most prominent FSA group in Aleppo.
While Akaidi is always referred to simply as head of the FSA’s Aleppo Military Council in the Western press, in the Arabic press, he is frequently described as a commander in Liwa al-Tawhid.6 Akaidi spoke as if he was a member of al-Tawhid while making a statement to the media about the fighting in the city of al-Qusayr in 2013.7 Reuters also noted this relationship, reporting that the military “council in Aleppo, led by Colonel Abdel-Jabbar al-Oqaidi, includes the powerful Tawheed Brigade and smaller ones.”8 Opposition activist Ammar Abdulhamid acknowledged the Salafist orientation of Liwa al-Tawhid after interviewing FSA officers and fellow opposition activists in Turkey in August 2012. Abdulhamid wrote that, “As for Al-Tawhid Brigades, their Salafi orientation is known to all,” and that “their funding comes from both the [Muslim Brotherhood] as well as Salafi sympathizers in the Gulf.9 Al-Jazeera similarly reported that Liwa al-Tawhid was among the most important FSA brigades, and was led by Abd al-Qader al-Saleh and Abd al- Aziz Salameh, both of whom were inclined towards Salafi ideology.10 Al-Tawhid’s objective in fighting the Syrian government was made clear on September 24, 2013, when Tawhid founder Salameh, along with 11 different armed opposition groups, including al-Qaeda’s Syrian wing, the Nusra Front, signed a statement calling for an Islamic state. Salameh announced that, “The mujahideen militant factions and forces that have signed this statement . . . call on all military and civilian organizations to unite under a clear Islamic framework, set forth by the magnanimity of Islam, operating on the basis that Sharia is the arbiter of governance and making it the sole source of legislation.”11 Hostility of the Liwa al-Tawhid leadership towards Alawites and Shiites was evident in several cases, which is to be expected given the group’s Salafist orientation. In December 2013, al-Tawhid founder Salameh wrote on Twitter in favor of “eradicating the Nusayris,” or Alawites, before walking back the comments after facing public criticism.12 In May 2013, Akaidi threatened to target Shiite civilians in both Lebanon and Syria in response to the involvement of Lebanese Hezbollah in the fighting against the FSA in al-Qusayr.13 Despite such threats from Akaidi and Salameh, and despite the Salafist orientation of Akaidi’s fighters, Ford strangely expected Syria’s Christians, Druze, Alawites, Shiites and Yazidis to take Akaidi’s assurances seriously that the FSA would protect them. Ford writes that, “Akaidi in Aleppo and Col. Afif Soleiman in Idlib stressed that the Free Syrian Army would protect Alawites in territories they liberated,” and he takes this as proof of their moderate orientation.
Ford’s faith in the FSA’s promises to protect religious minorities can be contrasted with the observations of Harout Ekmanian, a Syrian journalist from Aleppo, the same city that Akaidi and Liwa al-Tawhid sought to conquer. Ekmanian, himself a Christian, observes that, “[W]e see that there is almost no difference between the group called Free Syrian Army or other jihadist groups and ISIS. For instance, these ‘moderate’ opposition groups burned the churches down, when they entered Kessab. They entered Malula, where there is still an ancient Christian community speaking Aramaic. They destroyed that place too. There are many other examples like these.”14 One Purpose, Many Flags Third, these FSA groups did not constitute a distinct wing of the Syrian insurgency competing against al-Qaeda during the period when Ambassador Ford wished to provide them with lethal aid (mid-2013). Instead, FSA groups (including Akaidi and his fighters) were cooperating intimately with al-Qaeda during this time, and had been fighting with, and publicly providing moral support to, al-Qaeda’s Syrian wing for at least a year prior.
Akaidi himself claimed that Nusra constituted some 10% of the FSA in Aleppo.15 In December 2012, Time journalist Rania Abouzeid acknowledged that jihadi groups were part of the FSA.16 That same month, leaders of the political opposition abroad acknowledged that Nusra was part of the so-called revolution they claimed to represent.17 FSA leaders often took public credit for operations actually carried out by Nusra.18 Ambassador Ford writes in his essay that, “we decided to put [Nusra] on the U.S. government terrorism list in December 2012 to warn the Free Syrian Army and the political opposition to avoid and even condemn it.” Rather than avoiding or condemning Nusra as Ford apparently wished, FSA commanders and opposition political leaders did the exact opposite. They publicly praised the group, while criticizing the U.S. for putting it on the terror list.19 Pro-opposition Zaman al-Wasl reported that in response to the terror designation, an activist street movement in Aleppo and the Idlib countryside organized demonstrations calling for “Victory to Nusra” (a play on words in Arabic) and that pictures were circulating in recent days of FSA officers in Aleppo raising banners such as “Nusra fights with me in the battlefield. We are not terrorists.”20 Abdel Qader al-Saleh, head of the FSA’s Liwa Tawhid and a close friend and colleague of Akaidi, was among those who condemned placing Nusra on the terrorist list. In December 2012, he told al-Jazeera that “there is no terrorism in Syria except the terrorism of Bashar Al-Assad,” and “We participate in the fighting with [Nusra] and may disagree with some political ideas and visions, but we do not accept that they or other fighters be placed on the terrorist list.”21 When al-Saleh claimed that “We participate in the fighting” with Nusra, he was referring to the FSA assault on Aleppo six months before, in July 2012. At that time, al-Saleh appeared in a video with a Nusra commander to announce the start of the operation, which they named “Furqan,” or “Volcano.”22 In August 2012, a Nusra commander in Aleppo acknowledged fighting in the ranks of Liwa al-Tawhid directly.23 In the same month, correspondents from the Guardian observed seeing fighters from other parts of the Islamic world fighting in Aleppo, including from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Algeria and Senegal, further pointing to the role of Nusra in the initial invasion of the city alongside al-Tawhid.24 Summarizing the alliance between the FSA factions and Nusra, the Pan- Arab newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi noted that 2012 was a time when, “there was no enmity between Nusra and the FSA. Everyone was fighting for one purpose, even if there were many flags.”25 This unity of purpose continued into 2013. Martin Chulov of the Guardian reported in January 2013 that in Aleppo, Nusra had “set up a headquarters in plain sight in the centre of the city, alongside the base of a regular Free Syrian Army unit, Liwa al-Tawhid,” further illustrating the close cooperation of the two groups.26 This cooperation means that any weapons provided to Akaidi, as advocated by Ambassador Ford, would have gone to fighters from Liwa al-Tawhid, a Salafist militia fighting side by side with al-Qaeda, rather than to moderates with a secular and democratic orientation trying to resist al- Qaeda.
Ford attempts to obscure this in his essay. He vaguely refers to wanting to arm “Akaidi’s fighters,” while assuming his readers will not be aware of who Akaidi’s fighters really are. Ford’s failure to identify specific FSA brigades by name that he deemed as moderate appears to have been State Department policy, necessitated by the fact that such moderate groups simply did not exist. In March 2013, journalist Sharmine Narwani requested that a State Department spokesperson provide the name of just one moderate FSA brigade, however, the spokesperson refused to do so.27
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