Stephen Starr is a freelance journalist and newspaper editor working from Damascus

Syrian President Bashar Assad is facing a growing threat from Sunni Islamist militants intent on shattering more than two decades of unrivaled security and stability in Damascus. While it's not fully clear who exactly is responsible for the recent spate of terror attacks in Syria, Assad is pointing fingers at Saudi Arabia and its Lebanese allies - and not without justification.

Wake Up Calls

The Arab world's most rigidly secular state, Syria has a long history of violent struggles with Sunni Islamists. After the Syrian army killed some 15,000 people stamping out a 1982 uprising in Hama by the Muslim Brotherhood, the country enjoyed a quarter century of relative peace and quiet. Today, hundreds of Islamists are being held in Syrian jails for political and security offenses. Although Syria has recently been experiencing an Islamist revival and there have been a handful of small-scale terror attacks since the US-led invasion of Iraq, radical Islamist violence was not considered a serious threat to stability until this year.

On September 27, a car rigged with 200 kg of explosives detonated in the Sidi Kadad area of Damascus, killing 17 people. The explosion took place in close proximity to a security installation that deals specifically with Palestinian affairs in Syria, though state-run media reported that only civilians were killed. Many Syrians speculate that the bombers intended to target either the installation itself or a high-ranking intelligence official on his way in or out, ran into some form of countermeasure, and detonated the bomb on a crowded street to prevent capture. Some exiled dissidents and anti-Syrian Arab media outlets suggested that the attack succeeded - that deputy chairman of the Palestine branch of Syrian intelligence Abd al-Karim Abbas and/or Gen. Ibrahim al-Gharbi were among the dead - but this appears unlikely.

The attack was preceded by at least two successful assassinations this year.[1] In February, a Shiite terrorist mastermind affiliated with (and posthumously reclaimed by) Hezbollah, Imad Mughniyeh, was assassinated in a Damascus suburb. Brig. Gen. Muhammad Suleiman, a chief regime liaison with Hezbollah and negotiator with the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), was gunned down by a sniper in August. While the Syrian government publicly pledged to uncover the assassins of Mughniyeh and Suleiman, it has not released the results of either investigation. Another significant precursor is the outbreak of a riot among Islamists held at Saidnaya prison this past July, which led to the deaths of anywhere from nine to two dozen inmates.

From the very beginning, suspicions in Damascus focused on the Saudis, who have been at odds with Assad since the February 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. After the bombing, state-run media reported that the suicide bomber had been identified as a Saudi national connected with a radical "takfiri" network (an Arabic term referring to Sunnis who brand non-Sunni or non-observant Muslims as infidels).[2] Significantly, Saudi Arabia was alone among Arab governments in refusing to publicly denounce the bombing.[3]

Although the Syrian government has not directly accused Saudi Arabia of involvement, in the weeks following the bombing its spokesmen alluded frequently to Saudi support for takfiri groups in general and to possible motivations behind this attack that would ostensibly advance Saudi interests. Saudi Arabia is supporting extremist groups "in a stupid attempt to persuade the Americans and Europeans that there is no use in dealing with a weak and unstable Syrian regime," said one Syrian media official on condition of anonymity.[4] The perpetrators "wanted to tell the United States and Europe that Syria cannot be an element of stability in the region because it cannot protect its internal security," said another official.[5]

A more likely motive for the bombing would be to discourage Syria from clamping down on Salafi-jihadist infiltration into Iraq. In seeking rapprochement with the West, Damascus has tightened security along the border with Iraq.[6] Sunni extremists who had until recently been acting with impunity across the vast desert area that divides the two countries may have carried out the bombing to warn the Syrian regime from changing tack. "Once you have salafists and jihadis in your country and when you stop their flow to Iraq and their transit in and out from Lebanon, it is not surprising that such bombings occur," said Andrew Tabler, consulting editor of Syria Today.[7]

Other commentators have argued that the bombing may have been directed at Syria's links to Iran.[8] The bombing took place just three kilometers from an area inhabited by thousands of mostly Shiite Iraqi refugees, at an intersection leading to the nearby Shiite Sayida Zainab shrine, a main attraction for Iranian tourists.

It is important to bear in mind that Sunni-Shiite tensions in the region have been rising, with Iraq embroiled repeatedly in sectarian violence and even Lebanon succumbing to its first major outbreak of Sunni-Shiite violence this past May. Sheikh Youssef Qaradawi, a prominent Egyptian cleric widely considered a "moderate" Islamist, issued an unprecedented rhetorical provocation in September, telling a Cairo newspaper that "millions of dollars and trained cadres of Shiites [are] doing missionary work in Sunni countries,"[9] an obvious reference to Syria.

It is also important to note that the upper echelons of the Syrian government are Alawite, a sect of Islam that radical takfiris disdain even more than Shiism. Recent outbreaks of fighting in northern Lebanon between Lebanese Alawites and Sunnis were provoked by extremists eager to enflame sectarian animosities.

The Lebanon Connection

In early November, Syrian state television aired "confessions" by 11 purported members of the network, who said that the bombing was intended to be the first in a wave of attacks in Syria.[10] All claimed to be members of Fatah al-Islam, a Salafi-jihadist group that launched an ill-fated uprising in Lebanon's Nahr al-Bared refugee camp during the summer of 2007.[11] One suspect was identified as Wafa al-Absi, the daughter of Fatah al-Islam leader Shakr al-Absi. More importantly, several of them claimed that Fatah al-Islam had once been funded by Lebanese parliamentary majority leader Saad Hariri, the son of the late Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and close Saudi ally.

North Lebanon emerged as a hotbed of anti-Syrian Sunni Islamist activity in the early 1980s, when the Harakat al-Tawhid al-Islami movement in Tripoli teamed up with the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood (even accepting Syrian exiles into its ranks) and fought bloody clashes with Syrian troops in Lebanon and their local militia allies. During the Syrian occupation of Lebanon in the 1990s, the rugged hinterland of Tripoli and Palestinian refugee camps - areas where state control was weak or non-existent - attracted an international mix of Salafi jihadists aiming to dethrone secular governments in the region or fight abroad in places like Chechnya and Afghanistan. After bloody clashes between militants based in Dinniyeh and the Lebanese army in December 1999, Sunni jihadists outside of the refugee camps were forced to operate below the radar of Lebanese and Syrian security forces.

After the withdrawal of Syrian forces in 2005, Hariri's Future Movement formed an alliance with Saudi-backed Salafi preachers in Tripoli, led by Dai al-Islam al-Shahal. In exchange for their electoral support, the new Lebanese government emptied its jails of jihadists and took a hands off approach to dealing with armed Sunni networks. This came at a time when Iraq was becoming less and less hospitable to Arab jihadists. By 2007, the flow of militants from Lebanon to Syria to Iraq was reversed and Lebanon was teeming with idle jihadists from around Arab world (especially Saudi Arabia).

There's no question that Hariri and his allies sought to co-opt the jihadists, at least until last year. How many degrees of separation were involved is a matter of dispute. Hariri is widely reported to have funded above ground Salafi preachers who encourage the underground networks,[12] but there have also been plausible reports of direct aid to militants by his allies.[13] Also unclear is whether this was a proactive effort to build a Sunni counterweight to Hezbollah's militia or a reactive attempt at appeasement, but it fueled the rise and rapid growth of Fatah al-Islam (as did Syria's own attempts to exert influence over the jihadists).

Assad repeatedly warned of Islamic extremists in Lebanon in the months before the September 27 bombing.[14] A few days before the attack, thousands of Syrian troops deployed along the border with Lebanon, ostensibly to combat smuggling. In retrospect, it suggests the regime may have had some kind of advance warning of an operation. After the bombing, Assad warned that north Lebanon is "a real base for extremism and constitutes a danger for Syria."[15] In response, Dai al-Islam al-Shahal accused Syria of conspiring with Israel to invade Lebanon and "finish off the Salafi movement" and warned that such an attempt would open "the gates of hell."[16]

Implications

However, this doesn't mean the threat isn't real. While the resolution of Lebanon's political crisis during the summer of 2008 contributed to a reduction in tensions between Hariri and the Syrians, the anti-Syrian and anti-Shiite hostility of militant Lebanese Sunnis has continued to grow. Moreover, after a period of distancing itself from Salafi clerics following the 2007 Nahr al-Bared uprising, Hariri's Future Movement is reaffirming its ties with them ahead of next year's elections. In a recent meeting with Salafi sheikhs in Tripoli, Future Movement MP Ahmad Fatfat spoke openly of the need to solidify "internal Sunni ranks."[17] If it turns out that allies of Hariri are directly linked to violence against Syrians, Assad will feel a responsibility to take action in Lebanon, with uncertain consequences.

Notes

  [1] According to an unconfirmed report by the Syria Reform Party, a US-based dissident group, a Hamas official was killed in the central city of Homs in September. "Syria Reform Party says aide to Hamas chief shot dead in Syrian street," Haaretz (Tel Aviv), 16 September 2008.
  [2] Tishreen (Damascus), 29 September 2008.
  [3] "Damascus bombing was not a surprise, analysts say; Syria has angered Sunni Muslims as it navigates sectarian and political fault lines in the Middle East," The Los Angeles Times, 29 September 2008.
  [4] Quds Press news agency (London), 10 October 2008, translation by BBC Monitoring.
  [5] Quote by Umran al-Zu'bi, Quds Press news agency (London), 3 October 2008, translation by BBC Monitoring.
  [6] "U.S.-Syria may be step closer to thaw," CNN, 1 October 2008.
  [7] "Syria could be paying a price for moderating," The Associated Press, 28 September 2008.
  [8] See, for example, Riad Qahwaji, the director of the Dubai-based Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis, Al-Arabiya TV "Panorama," 27 September 2008.
  [9] Cleric's Remarks Spark Sunni-Shia Tensions, National Public Radio, 13 October 2008,
  [10] "March 14 denies charge of funding Fatah al-Islam," The Daily Star (Beirut), 8 November 2008.
  [11] "March 14 denies charge of funding Fatah al-Islam," The Daily Star (Beirut), 8 November 2008.
  [12] "Lebanon warily watches its Salafis," The Christian Science Monitor, 24 September 2008. See also "In Lebanon, puritanical Sunnis and a reputed playboy team up in politics," The Los Angeles Times, 17 November 2008.
  [13] Seymour M. Hersh, "The Redirection: Does the new policy benefit the real enemy?" The New Yorker, 5 March 2007.
  [14] "Syria urges security cooperation on Lebanon border," Reuters, 1 October 2008.
  [15] "Assad warns north Lebanon has become base for extremism, poses danger to Syria," The Daily Star (Beirut), 30 September 2000.
  [16] "Senior Salafi Cleric Issues Stark Warning to Damascus," The Daily Star (Beirut), 3 October 2008.
  [17] "Fatfat vows to take on issue of Islamist detainees," The Daily Star (Beirut), 5 November 2008.