opposition News (May 31, 2006)

The Khaddam people sent out the following circular yesterday advertising their London meeting on June 4 and 5 with the Muslim Brothers and other groups of the National Salvation Front. They will get some press coverage this way. I have written to see if they will give advance notice of who is coming and whether Junblatt or possibly Saad al-Hariri will make guest appearances at the close of the conference to endorse their efforts.

It would certainly be a coup for Bayanouni if Khaddam can pull in the big guns from Lebanon to perform a laying on of hands. Such Lebanese patronage would help them get the blessing of Washington. Washington is flirting with the Salvation Front in order to raise the pressure on Damascus. All the same, Bashar al-Assad is counting on the fact that each time Washington has moved from flirtation to full body embrace of fundamentalist parties, it wakes up the next morning regretting its promiscuous actions. Such has been the case in Iraq and Palestine. According to Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal, it looks like Bush has been spooked by Egypt's Muslim Brothers as well. Stephens' article yesterday was entitled: "Bush Betrays Egypt's Democrats. For What?"

Here is the Salvation Front Circular:

For the attention of the Chief Editor,

This is to inform you that the National Salvation Front (NSF) will be holding its convention to evaluate current events in Syria. The NSF will discuss and put in place an executive plan for the liberation & democratization of Syria.

The NSF convention will be attended by more than 50 persons of various political backgrounds and movements. It will be held on the 4th & 5th of June in London, United Kingdom.

In case you are interested in covering this event or to do personal interviews you are invited to write us to:

jak15559@yahoo.fr
You can as well call +33631992006.

Simon Tisdall writing for the Guardian has a good analysis of the ongoing crackdown in Syria in his article, "Syria's silent purge." Rime Allaf is quoted. She is upbeat about the National Salvation Front and believes it could be the beginning of the end for Assad. She says: "This is the first time in four decades that we've seen significant organised opposition to the regime. They've gone out on a limb to draw in other exiles and groups from around the world." If the NSF proved a serious proposition, she said, all Mr Assad's machinations could count for nought.

Meanwhile Farid Ghadry's Reform Party has been melting down. He has accused one of his main party members of being a regime spy. It would seem that Ghadry believes that Rifaat al-Assad, Bashar's renegade uncle, has penetrated his party on orders from the Syrian regime.

Tyler Golson, a Georgetown student, translated a recent Ghadry circular about it that was only sent out in Arabic. Here is Tyler's backgrounder with the translation:

A note of context: as of early May 2006, I was receiving two emails a week from Ali al-Hajj Hussein, the Arabic language spokesperson of the Reform Party of Syria, having signed up for their newsletter. They were typical party rhetoric and announcements stuff, sometimes translated in the accompanying English language newsletter, although usually not (it's unclear why the Arabic and English language newsletters normally address totally different subjects...Based on my own interview with al-Ghadry and discourse analysis of party literature conducted last semester for a Grad class at Georgetown, I understand this to be indicative of the US-based Syrian reform movement's crippling schizophrenia: it wants to be all things to all people, unashamedly altering its message in order to suit different audiences, but ultimately it is unpalatable to both Syrian and foreign audiences because neither can trust it...)

Anyway, Ali al-Hajj Hussein normally sends out short memos on behalf of the Reform Party. But on May 4th I received a surprising announcement condemning Mr. Hussein as a regime spy and agent provocateur. Here's my (Tyler's) translation:

Declaration of the expulsion of a party member

Following the unanimous vote of the majority of the members of the executive committee of the Reform Party of Syria in Syria and America and Europe, the party decided to terminate Mr. Ali al-Hajj Hussein's membership permanently.

The party expressed its shock at Mr. Ali al-Hajj Hussein's latest actions in which he appeared without the authorization of the party on one of the satellite channels that opposes democratic change in Syria. He tried to split the party on the orders of a well known personality. He also denigrated the reputation of the party and cast doubt on its leadership, in addition to recording the voices of everyone who called the party without their knowledge and repeatedly threatened to use the recordings for his own interests.

The Reform Party apologizes to all party members whose voices were recorded by Mr. Ali al-Hajj Hussein without their knowledge. We in the leadership of the party condemn all of these secretive security practices carried out by any member regardless of his rank. And we also apologize to the members and friends of the Reform Party for Mr. Ali al-Hajj Hussein’s attempt to suggest that the Reform Party and its President Mr. Farid al-Ghadry are connected to the owner of the satellite channel on which Mr. Hussein appeared.

And the President of the Reform Party stresses that the Party protects its members and emphasizes that the party will not enter into disputes that divert us from our primary objective that is to work for the Syrian people in choosing the democratic life which they deserve. He asserts the right of the Party's members, friends and allies, domestic and foreign, to know that when Mr. Ali al-Hajj Hussein failed to split the party, he turned to personal threats and insults with the objective of weakening the Reform Party's continuing mission to topple the Syrian regime.

We hope that everyone will communicate with the leadership of the party in the future at this interim address until we return to our beloved homeland.

info@reformsyria.com
1700 Pennsylvania Avenue NW - Suite 400
Washington DC 20004 - USA

Ghadry's English language circular had this to say:

RPS Elects New Leadership
Washington DC, May 12, 2006/RPS/ -- In the last few days, RPS has conducted new secret balloted elections, that saw new and younger leadership become more visible chosen from the ranks of our loyal members. The elections were held in response to new threats by the Syrian intelligence to penetrate RPS ranks.

Ten new members were chosen to the Executive Committee with an average age of 33. Four either resigned their posts or were forced out. Farid Ghadry's mandate as president of RPS was extended for another 2 years in accordance with RPS by-laws. The votes were delivered to an anonymous email set-up for that purpose and tallied by an RPS leadership in Paris.

RPS new blood is generating a buzz in Syria amongst the youth. These extraordinary people represent the future of Syria with all its mosaic of multi-ethnicity and multi-cultural backgrounds. Their names shall remain anonymous to protect their well being but their voices will be heard in and throughout.

Getting news out of Damascus about the opposition is getting difficult these days. Ferry Biedermann has long been a pro at getting the Damascus story.

Jailed dissident defiant after attack on Damascus conduct in Lebanon
By Ferry Biedermannin Damascus
Financial Times May 29 2006

Akram Bunni is a stocky, bespectacled 51-year old with grey hair and an easy laugh that he maintains even when he discusses his brother Anwar, a prominent human rights lawyer who now languishes in jail and who is on a hunger strike.

"Don't worry, eat, eat," he urges while gesticulating toward the well-decked table in a fashionable Damascus café. "Anwar would like us to enjoy ourselves."

His brother is among the most prominent of the 10 people who were arrested two weeks ago after having signed a declaration criticising Syria's conduct in Lebanon.

This "Beirut-Damascus" joint statement with Lebanese intellectuals and activists has either infuriated the government, possibly because it was co-signed by the banned Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, or has provided it with a pretext to expand a crackdown on some of its most outspoken critics.

Anwar Bunni was among a group of dissidents particularly scathing about what they saw as their government's mishandling of its relations with Lebanon when the world's attention was focused on the issue in the months after the assassination of Rafiq Hariri, Lebanon's former prime minister, in February 2005.

When it comes to prison, the Bunni family has had more than its share. Akram, two other brothers but not Anwar, his sister and brother-in-law have all served lengthy jail terms starting in the 1990s, for membership of a banned communist organisation.

"At one point only my mother and Anwar were free," says Akram Bunni. "They kept up a busy schedule of visiting us in different jails because we were split up."

He has just returned from seeing Anwar in prison and says that the lawyer is in good spirits but Akram has not been able to convince Anwar to give up the hunger strike that he started on the day he was arrested. "You would not recognise him now. He is pale and even skinnier than usual."

As he recounts his own tales of mistreatment in the notorious Palmyra prison, he becomes angry at his brother's fate. "When I was arrested, at least I knew why; I had been a member of a forbidden group. But Anwar has done nothing wrong, except speak his mind."

Akram Bunni says he is convinced that the Beirut-Damascus statement was just a pretext for the government to arrest his brother. The week before, Anwar had been stripped of his licence to practise law and in March the authorities closed down his recently opened human rights centre that was largely funded by the EU.

One of the few others in Syria who are as outspoken as Mr Bunni, is human rights lawyer Haitham Maleh. He has also recently felt increased pressure from the government. Lately he has not been allowed to leave the country and last Thursday was sentenced to 10 days in jail by a military court "for having insulted the president"....

Jihad's Architect Of New War On West
Writings Lay Out Post-9/11 Strategy of Isolated Cells Joined in Jihad

By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, May 23, 2006; Page A01

From secret hideouts in South Asia, the Spanish-Syrian al-Qaeda strategist published thousands of pages of Internet tracts on how small teams of Islamic extremists could wage a decentralized global war against the United States and its allies.
With the Afghanistan base lost, he argued, radicals would need to shift their approach and work primarily on their own, though sometimes with guidance from roving operatives acting on behalf of the broader movement.

Last October, the writing career of Mustafa Setmariam Nasar came to an abrupt end when Pakistani agents seized him in a friend's house in the border city of Quetta and turned him over to U.S. intelligence operatives, according to two senior Pakistani intelligence officials.

With Spanish, British and Syrian interrogators lining up with requests to question him, he has turned out to be a prize catch, a man who is not a bombmaker or operational planner but one of the jihad movement's prime theorists for the post-Sept. 11, 2001, world.

Counterterrorism officials and analysts see Nasar's theories in action in major terrorist attacks in Casablanca in 2003, Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005. In each case, the perpetrators organized themselves into local, self-sustaining cells that acted on their own but also likely accepted guidance from visiting emissaries of the global movement.

Nasar's masterwork, a 1,600-page volume titled "The Call for a Global Islamic Resistance," has been circulating on Websites for 18 months. The treatise, written under the pen name Abu Musab al-Suri, draws heavily on lessons from past conflicts.

Nasar, 47, outlines a strategy for a truly global conflict on as many fronts as possible and in the form of resistance by small cells or individuals, rather than traditional guerrilla warfare. To avoid penetration and defeat by security services, he says, organizational links should be kept to an absolute minimum.

"The enemy is strong and powerful, we are weak and poor, the war duration is going to be long and the best way to fight it is in a revolutionary jihad way for the sake of Allah," he said in one paper. "The preparations better be deliberate, comprehensive and properly planned, taking into account past experiences and lessons."

Intelligence officials said Nasar's doctrine has made waves in radical Islamic chat rooms and on Websites about jihad - holy war or struggle - over the past two years. His capture, they added, has only added to his mystique.

"He is probably the first to spell out a doctrine for a decentralized global jihad," said Brynjar Lia, a senior counterterrorism researcher at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment, who is writing a book on Nasar. "In my humble opinion, he is the best theoretician among the jihadi ideologues and strategists out there. Nobody is as systematic and comprehensive in their analysis as he is. His brutal honesty and self-criticism is unique in jihadi circles."