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Islamic Front snubs US ambassador
This column warned last week that the rise of the Islamic Front at the expense of moderate, secular forces was a disaster for Syria. This week, the Islamic Front refused to meet with US Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford. Ford, despite the snub, said, “We are ready to sit with them because we talk to all parties and political groups in Syria.” One might question whether Ford should be asking for a meeting with the Islamic Front, especially after being stiffed. The Islamic Front welcomes foreign fighters and supports Islamic law in Syria. Its rise, at the expense of the Western-backed Free Syrian Army, is the result of Saudi backing and finance. Although a force on the battlefield, there seems to be little about the Front that would merit the United States including them in a broad-based opposition group that is supposed to help the transition to a democratic future for Syria. So instead of hoping for a sit-down with those who want a Sharia future for Syria, US diplomacy might be better focused on persuading Riyadh to rein in its Syrian jihadist allies and adhere to a cease-fire, if one can even be negotiated at this point. That is the only conversation the United States should be having about the Islamic Front or other jihadist groups operating there, and it is to be had with Saudi Arabia, not the Front. If it is not already too late, the United States should refocus on engaging secular opposition figures, especially those inside Syria who would be well-positioned to play a bridging role in a transition and who have been sidelined by the machinations and largesse of regional parties. With the rise of a more radicalized, foreign-backed Islamist opposition, the prospect of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad negotiating his own transition out of office in January at the Geneva II conference seems a non-starter. Syrian Deputy Foreign and Expatriates Minister Faysal Mikdad said on Dec. 20, “Syria is fully prepared to participate in the conference and we will announce the names of the delegation.” Mikdad said that counterterrorism should be the priority of the conference, and “this is [the] fundamental point which all the Syrians should agree on and then all other points are open to be debated.” He said that the end result of the dialogue should be elections, and “no one can prevent President Assad to stand for a new presidential term in the year 2014.” Also on Dec. 20, Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN-Arab League special representative for Syria, and representatives of the permanent members of the UN Security Council, agreed that Saudi Arabia would be invited to Geneva II, although the United States continues to block Iran’s participation in the conference. As this article has argued time and again, there is no cease-fire or transition in Syria without Iran. If the purpose of Geneva II is to stop the war and negotiate a political transition, it is not clear how this objective is served by keeping out Iran, Syria’s number-one ally. Iran, on the outside, would have no investment in a successful outcome. Keeping Iran out of Geneva II is probably money in the bank for a stalemated or unsuccessful conference. Erdogan rocked by scandal On Dec. 17, Turkey was shaken by a corruption crackdown that implicated, among others, the sons of three cabinet members, a Justice and Development Party (AKP) mayor and other government officials. The conventional wisdom is that this incident has launched open political warfare between Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his party on the one hand, against the Gulen movement on the other. AKP loyalists believe the Gulen group initiated the corruption probe in order to embarrass Erdogan. Henri Barkey writes for Al-Monitor that both Erdogan and Gulen will lose face, but will not lose big enough that they are going away. According to Barkey, the winner may be President Abdullah Gul: “AKPers made uncomfortable by Erdogan’s power grab have been making a pilgrimage to the presidential palace to ask Gul to intervene or, better, re-enter politics. Gul has shown great dexterity, calm and maturity during his stint in the presidency. So many have trekked up Cankaya Hill that the joke circulating in Ankara is that the presidency is the new ‘Wailing Wall.'” Semih Idiz writes about how there are already accusations of an Israeli hand in the “dirty alliance” (Erdogan’s words) behind the corruption probe. “If Israel is behind the current scandal — as some in the pro-government camp claim — this means Fethullah Gulen, whose supporters in the police and judiciary allegedly initiated this probe, is in collusion with a country that is universally vilified by Islamists. Many AKP supporters who are sympathetic toward Gulen will find this hard to accept. It is telling in this regard that all the accusations coming from official AKP quarters refer to the Gulen group indirectly, without naming it. When asked if they mean the Gulen group, government spokesmen deny it. The closest they get to naming Gulen is to point to a gang in the state apparatus that uses the group’s name.” Kadri Gursel offers a score sheet of damages that Erdogan and the AKP have already suffered as a result of the corruption probe, including the end of the “‘corruption taboo,’ which is the top taboo of AKP Turkey. … Since 2008, the media have not published a single corruption report that might harm government interests due to self-censorship as a result of government pressure. Someone not aware of the realities might have thought that corruption in Turkey was something of the past. The Dec. 17 operation, however, proved that corruption is widespread and has reached very dangerous levels.” Yavuz Baydar suggests that Erdogan may be forced to reshuffle his cabinet. The AKP is likely to get dinged, although it is unclear at this stage by how much. “The irony is, Erdogan — and [Bulent] Arinc — are founders of a party that was brought to power by a massive voter base infuriated by corrupt politicians in the 1990s and a huge economic crisis that ended it,” Baydar writes. Amberin Zaman warns that journalists will likely get caught in the crossfireas pro-government media may adopt a “with us or against us” mode as the government seeks out those who are behind the corruption charges. Iran, too, is already a supporting player in the scandal, as Fehim Tastekin reports on how with “the detentions of Suleyman Aslan, CEO of Halkbank, and Riza Sarraf, an Iranian businessman who deals with gold … the focus is now on the Iran-Halkbank-gold triangle.” Fears of ‘snowball effect’ with ASA boycott of Israel On Dec. 4, the American Studies Association made Israel the first and only country to be singled out for a boycott of its academic institutions. While Clovis Maksoud, writing for Al-Monitor, and Henry Siegman, writing in Haaretz, see the boycott as a possible catalyst for dialogue, Professor Rivka Carmi, president of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, in an interview with Al-Monitor’s Shlomi Eldar, predicted a “snowball effect,” as the Modern Language Association will discuss academic boycotts at its meeting in January. Carmi told Eldar: “Academia does many things in the direction of coexistence. Ben-Gurion University has a long list of cooperative endeavors. An entire class of doctors from Jordan studied emergency medicine here. Eighteen Jordanians, all of them studied here at our expense after the Jordanian government acceded to their persuasive efforts and gave them visas. Palestinian and Jordanian students study in a [Ben-Gurion] branch in Kibbutz Sde Boker. Most of the relationships, contacts and cooperative ventures that exist today between the sides are in academia, but I am not sure that people want to hear that.” Eldar concludes: “The boycott train has already left the station and it’s hard to imagine stopping it in the near future — with an Israeli campaign or without it. Surprisingly, one person who came out recently against the boycott was none other than Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. After former South African President Nelson Mandela’s state memorial service in South Africa, Abbas said that he opposed the adoption of a boycott against Israel. Israeli academics can only imagine what would have happened had we not been in the very midst of negotiations with the Palestinians.” |
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