Israel Matzav: Obama's Islamist 'leadership' for Syria falling apart

Monday, March 19, 2012

Obama's Islamist 'leadership' for Syria falling apart

Barry Rubin reports that an Islamist-dominated leadership for Syria, which was established by Turkey at President Obama's request, is falling apart, because the Syrian people are interested in real freedom and not in becoming another Islamic caliphate.

But the Syrian National Council (SNC) has failed. The Islamist angle and the Obama Administration’s responsibility for this fiasco is being far underplayed.

Several SNC members, including Kamal al-Labwani and Haitham Maleh, have announced their resignations. They are both elderly veteran dissidents who are not Islamists. The reason being given most often for this crack-up is that the group’s leadership is “autocratic,” excluding most of the membership from any role in decision-making. Leaving aside the element of personal ambition, however, why is it autocratic? Because it is imposing the Muslim Brotherhood line rather than responding to the preferences of the activists within Syria, that’s why.

As the New York Times admits, al-Labwani, “accused Muslim Brotherhood members within the exile opposition of `monopolizing funding and military support.’” Yet there is not a word about how the Obama Administration pushed this Brotherhood-dominated leadership onto the Syrian opposition.

Most of the Kurds involved in the original talks angrily walked out of the negotiations because of their objection to Islamist leadership. The Obama Administration’s choice of Turkey to coordinate this operation made it even harder to bring in Syrian Kurds, who play an important role in the revolution, since Turkey has fought a long war against Kurdish nationalism at home.

Another issue fomenting conflict is the SNC’s bad relationship with the Free Syrian Army and rejection of armed struggle to overthrow the dictatorship. Anti-Islamist oppositionists say that this is because the Islamists hope to make a deal with the regime that would empower them (and they hope would eventually bring them to power in the longer-term) rather than fight it out.

Due to these various antagonisms, more than a half-dozen other opposition groups have developed as rivals to the SNC.

Dissidents have also pointed to this video which shows Muslim Brotherhood leader Ali Sadreddine Bayanouni claiming that the Brotherhood chose Birhan Ghalioun to be the SNC leader as a front man because he would be more appealing to the West than an open Islamist.

It is good that the SNC is falling apart.

Tony Badran says that the Obama administration has been working actively to maintain the current imbalance of forces in Syria.

The administration has been criticized repeatedly for not asserting leadership when it came to Syria. In reality, however, the administration did very much push its preferences on its regional allies. Its public messaging and diplomatic activity left no doubt that it continued to oppose any military aid to the FSA and that it insisted on going through Moscow one more time, regardless of the time this would buy Assad.

So, although the official said that the administration was not going to “publicly or privately” tell allies not to arm the FSA, as a matter of fact, Washington has been quite verbose these last three weeks, and its message to regional allies, like Saudi Arabia and Qatar, against arming the opposition, has been unmistakable. After all, the US Secretary of State herself twice said that arming the Syrian opposition might be like sending weapons to Al-Qaeda.

It’s clear that President Obama, who’s running on a policy of extrication from the region, sees that opening the door to military aid risks drawing the US in. Despite the increased pressure to move in that direction, the president is determined to keep the US out of the game.

This was not lost on Al-Sharq Al-Awsat’s Homayed. “[I]t is clear that Obama is not concerned with the security of the region… rather [he] is preoccupied with his re-election bid,” he wrote in his column.

The Saudis may not yet have gone as far as Senator John McCain, who the other day called the administration’s policy “disgraceful and shameful.” However, with their media now openly labeling President Obama as part of the problem alongside Assad’s Russian allies, they’re hardly being subtle.

Badran claims that the US is overstating the presence of al-Qaeda among the anti-government forces. Read the whole thing.

Labels: al-Qaeda, Bashar al-Assad, Syrian uprising