Who’s who in the Syrian uprising

The regime
Power is largely concentrated in the extended Assad family and broader Alawite community, while political leadership is closely interconnected with top military command and mukhabarat (secret police). The regime also maintains support from key business and banking powers in Syria, especially in Damascus and Aleppo. It has political support and some military assistance from Iran. Recent expressions of political support have come from the ALBA countries of Latin America (Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Venezuela) in the context of US and other western threats. It has key military and commercial ties with Russia.
The original nonviolent opposition
Broad and diverse, secular and faith based, many activists came together in new informal coalitions that bypassed older, more staid organisations. They remain opposed to arming the opposition and especially to outside military intervention. These activists were the primary force of the early uprising but had less visibility as the regime suppressed protests, international media were largely excluded and internal independent media focused primarily on attacks on civilians.
Public mobilisations, including but not limited to street protests, appear to be increasing again, especially in Damascus and Aleppo, once relative strongholds of regime support. In April a young woman stood alone outside the parliament in Damascus with a banner that read ‘Stop the killing, we want to build a homeland for all Syrians.’ Islamist forces are among those involved in the nonviolent opposition, including long-time Syrian nonviolent leader Sheikh Jawad Said.
The nonviolent opposition also includes the National Coordination Committee, made up of 13 political parties, including some leftist forces, and independent, mainly secular activists. Their leader, Hussein Abdul Azim, has said: ‘We reject foreign intervention – we think it is as dangerous as tyranny. We reject both.’ They do, however, support economic sanctions and diplomatic pressure. The NCC does not call for overthrowing the regime but for a national dialogue – conditional on the pullback of military forces from the streets, ending attacks on peaceful protests and release of all political prisoners. Some in the NCC have called for trying to replace the Syrian National Council (see below) as the recognised representative of the Syrian opposition.
The internal Syrian armed opposition
Originally based on military defectors who created the Free Syrian Army, the armed opposition morphed into assorted militias using the FSA name, but with little central coordination; it includes both defectors and armed civilians. FSA leaders have admitted they are not in control of the proliferation of groups of armed civilians operating under the FSA name. The number of soldiers reported killed has escalated recently, as have reports of direct fights between regime soldiers and armed opposition groups. Heavier weapons appear to be arriving from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, Turkey is providing logistical support and the US is supplying ‘non-lethal’ military equipment, including night-vision goggles and GPS gear.
The internal/external supporters of the armed opposition
Grouped primarily in the Syrian National Council (SNC), the supporters of the armed opposition call explicitly for the overthrow of the regime. They include the Muslim Brotherhood (probably the most organised group), local coordination committees (grassroots activist groups inside Syria), Kurdish factions and others, including exile factions. The SNC originally claimed to defend the nonviolent nature of the uprising but later called for a coordinating role over armed factions inside Syria and control of all weapons going in. The FSA rejects this and says it wants weapons supplied directly. At least some SNC leaders are calling for outside military assistance. The SNC recently asked individual countries to provide the Syrian opposition with ‘military advisers, training and provision of arms to defend themselves’.
Very diverse politically, both secular and Islamist, the SNC has had continuing problems with achieving enough unity to engage with international forces. There are consistent disagreements over Islamist influence. Despite divisions, uncertain leadership and questionable levels of support from inside Syria, the SNC has been adopted by western (US, parts of EU) and Arab Gulf (Saudi, Qatar) governments and to some degree Turkey. US secretary of state Hillary Clinton has said: ‘They will have a seat at the table as a representative of the Syrian people.’
Non-Syrian armed forces
Outside forces, including from international Islamist fighting groups, appear to be arriving to fight in Syria. Goals unclear, could include opposition to Alawite/Shia government (Alawites considered an off-shoot of Shia Islam, and thus heretical to some extremist Sunni fundamentalists), and/or efforts to create chaos through military attacks resulting in power vacuums they might hope to fill.

Here we go again with the Iran hysteria. It is tempting to think this time will be just like previous periods of sabre rattling against Iran. But there are significant new dangers. The Arab Spring, Israel’s position, changes in the regional and global balance of forces, and national election campaigns, all point to this round of anti-Iranian hysteria posing potentially graver risks than five or six years ago.

We have seen all this before. The US ratchets up its rhetoric, Israel threatens a military attack, escalating sanctions bite harder on the Iranian people, Iran refuses to back down on uranium enrichment. But at the same time, top US military and intelligence officials actually admit Iran does not have a nuclear weapon, is not building a nuclear weapon, and has not decided whether to even begin a building process.

In 2004 Israel’s prime minister denounced the international community for not doing enough to stop Iran from building a nuclear weapon. In 2005 the Israeli military was reported to ‘be ready by the end of March for possible strikes on secret uranium enrichment sites in Iran’. In 2006 the US House Armed Services Committee issued a report drafted by one congressional staffer (an aide to hard-line pro-war John Bolton, then US ambassador to the UN), claiming that Iran was enriching uranium to weapons-grade 90 per cent. That same year a different Israeli prime minister publicly threatened a military strike against Iran. In 2008, George W Bush visited Israel to reassure them that ‘all options’ remained on the table.

The earlier crisis saw a very similar gap between the demonisation, sanctions, threats of military strikes against Iran, and the seemingly contradictory recognition by US, Israeli, United Nations and other military and intelligence officials that Iran actually did not possess nuclear weapons, a nuclear weapons programme, or even a decision to try to develop nuclear weapons.

The 2005 US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) determined that even if Iran decided it wanted to make a nuclear weapon, it was unlikely before five to ten years, and that producing enough fissile material would be impossible even in five years unless Iran achieved ‘more rapid and successful progress’ than it had so far. By 2007, a new NIE had pulled back even further, asserting ‘with high confidence that in fall 2003 Tehran halted its nuclear weapons programme … Tehran had not started its nuclear weapons programme as of mid-2007’. The NIE even admitted ‘we do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons’. That made the dire threats against Iran sound pretty lame. So maybe it wasn’t surprising that Newsweek magazine described how, ‘in private conversations with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert last week, the president all but disowned the document’.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA - the UN’s nuclear watchdog) issued report after report indicating it could find no evidence that Iran had diverted enriched uranium to a weapons programme. The UN inspection agency harshly rejected the House committee report, calling some of its claims about Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons activities incorrect, and others ‘outrageous and dishonest’. And outside of the Bush White House, which was spearheading much of the hysteria, members of Congress, the neo-con think tanks, hysterical talk show hosts, and much of the mainstream media went ballistic.

Then and now

All of that sounds very familiar right now. Military and intelligence leaders in Israel and the US once again admit that Iran does not have nukes. (Israel of course does, but no one talks about that.) Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta asked and answered his own Iran question: ‘Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No.’ Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper, Jr. admitted the US does not even know ‘if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons’. The latest 2011 NIE makes clear there is no new evidence to challenge the 2007 conclusions; Iran still does not have a nuclear weapons programme in operation.

According to the Independent, ‘almost the entire senior hierarchy of Israel’s military and security establishment is worried about a premature attack on Iran and apprehensive about the possible repercussions.’ Former head of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said ‘it is quite clear that much if not all of the IDF leadership do not support military action at this point.’

But despite all the military and intelligence experts, the threat of war still looms. Republican candidates pound the lecterns promising that ‘when I’m president…’ Iran will accept international inspectors - as if the IAEA had not maintained an inspection team inside Iran for many years now. We hear overheated rumours of Iranian clerics promising nuclear weapons to their people - as if Iran’s leaders had not actually issued fatwas against nuclear weapons, something that would be very difficult to reverse.

Some strategic issues are indeed at stake, but the current anti-Iran mobilisation is primarily political. It doesn’t reflect actual US or Israeli military or intelligence threat assessments, but rather political conditions pushing politicians, here and in Israel, to escalate the fear factor about Iranian weapons (however non-existent) and the urgency for attacking Iran (however illegal). And the danger, of course, is that this kind of rhetoric can box leaders in, making them believe they cannot back down from their belligerent words.

Israel at the centre

One of the main differences from the propaganda run-up to the Iraq war is the consistent centrality of Israel and its supporters, particularly AIPAC in the US, in this push for war against Iran. Israel certainly jumped aboard the attack-Iraq bandwagon when it was clear that war was indeed inevitable, but US strategic concerns regarding oil and the expansion of US military power were first and primary. Even back then, Israel recognised Iran as a far greater threat than Iraq. And now, Israelis using that alleged threat to pressure US policymakers and shape US policy - in dangerous ways. During this campaign cycle, Obama is under the greatest pressure he has ever faced, and likely ever will face, to defend the Israeli position unequivocally, and to pledge US military support for any Israeli action, however illegal, dangerous, and threatening to US interests.

Iran simply is not, as former CIA analyst and presidential adviser Bruce Reidel makes clear, ‘an existential threat’ to Israel. Even a theoretical future nuclear-armed Iran, if it ever chose that trajectory, would not be a threat to the existence of Israel, but would be a threat to Israel’s longstanding nuclear monopoly in the Middle East. That is the real threat motivating Israel’s attack-Iran-now campaign. Further, as long as top US political officials, from the White House to Congress, are competing to see who can be more supportive of Israel in its stand-off with Iran, no one in Washington will even consider pressure on Israel to end its violations of international law and human rights regarding its occupation and apartheid policies towards Palestinians. Israel gets a pass.

Israel is more isolated in the region than ever before. The US-backed neighbouring dictatorships Israel once counted on as allies are being challenged by the uprisings of the Arab Spring. Egypt’s Mubarak was overthrown, the king of Jordan faces growing pressure at home, and the threats to Syria’s regime mean that Israel could face massive instability on its northern border - something Bashar al-Assad and his father largely staved off since Israel occupied the Syrian Golan Heights in 1967.

Syria’s two struggles in one

The calamity underway in Syria is also directly linked to the Iran crisis. There are two struggles going on in Syria, and unfortunately one may destroy the potential of the other. First was Syria’s home-grown popular uprising against a brutal government, inspired by and organically tied to the other risings of the Arab Spring, and like them calling first for massive reform and soon for the overthrow of the regime. Syria is a relatively wealthy and diverse country, in which a large middle class, especially in Damascus and Aleppo, had prospered under the regime, despite its political repression. As a result, unlike some other regional uprisings, Syria’s opposition was challenging a regime which still held some public support and legitimacy.

The regime’s drastic military assault on largely non-violent protests led some sectors of the opposition to take up arms, in tandem with growing numbers of military defectors, which of course meant waging their democratic struggle in the terrain in which the regime remains strongest: military force. The government’s security forces killed thousands, injuring and arresting thousands more, and in recent weeks even the longstanding support for Assad in Damascus and Aleppo began to waver. Simultaneously, attacks against government forces increased, and the internal struggle has taken on more and more the character of a civil war.

The further complication in Syria, and its link to Iran, is that it has simultaneously become a regional and global struggle. Syria is Iran’s most significant partner in the Middle East, so key countries that support Israel’s anti-Iran mobilisation have turned against Syria, looking to weaken Iran by undermining its closest ally. Perhaps because the Assad regimes have kept the occupied Golan Heights and the Israeli-Syrian border relatively quiet, Israel itself has not been the major public face in the regionalisation of the Syrian crisis. But clearly Saudi Arabia is fighting with Iran in Syria for influence in the region. The Arab League, whose Syria decision-making remains dominated by the Saudis and their allied Gulf petro-states (such as Qatar and the UAE), is using the Syria crisis to challenge Iran’s rising influence in Arab countries from Iraq to Lebanon. And of course the US, France and other Western powers have jumped on the very real human rights crisis in Syria to try to further weaken the regime there - in the interest again of undermining Iran’s key ally far more than out of concern for the Syrian people.

Diminishing US power

Facing economic crisis, military failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the loss or weakening of key client states in the Arab world, the US is weaker and less influential in the Middle East. But maintaining control of oil markets and US strategic capacity are still key regional goals for the US, which means that military power remains central. The nature of that military engagement is changing - away from large-scale deployments of ground troops in favour of rapidly expanding fleets of armed drones, special forces, and growing reliance on naval forces, navy bases and sea-based weapons.

Thus the US backs Saudi intervention in Bahrain to insure the US Fifth Fleet maintains its Bahraini base; Washington’s escalating sanctions give the West greater leverage in control of oil markets; the Iranian rhetorical threat to close the Strait of Hormuz (only in desperation since it would prevent Iran from exporting its own oil) is used to justify expansion of the US naval presence in the region. Along with the possibility of losing Syria as a major military purchaser and regional ally, concerns about those US strategic moves played a large part of Russia’s veto of the UN resolution on Syria.

In Iran, the pressure is high and the sanctions are really starting to bite, with much greater impact felt by the Iranian population, rather than the regime in Tehran. The assassination of Iranian nuclear experts, particularly the most recent murder of a young scientist which was greeted by Israeli officials with undisguised glee and barely-disguised triumph, are more likely aimed at provoking an Iranian response than actually undermining Iran’s nuclear capacity. So far, Iran has resisted the bait. But if Israel makes good on its threat of a military strike - despite the virtually unanimous opposition of its own military and intelligence leadership - there is little reason to imagine that Iran would respond only with words. The US and Israel are not the only countries whose national leaders face looming contests; Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and its president face huge political challenges as well.

The consequences of a strike against Iran would be grave - from attacks on Israeli and/or US military targets, to going after US forces in Iran’s neighbours Afghanistan, Iraq, and Kuwait, to attacks on the Pentagon’s Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, to mining the Strait of Hormuz … and beyond. An attack by the US, a nuclear weapons state, on a non-nuclear weapons state such as Iran, would be a direct violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran might kick out the UN nuclear inspectors. The hardest of Iran’s hard-line leaders would almost certainly consolidate ever greater power – both at home and in the Arab countries, and the calls to move towards greater nuclearisation, perhaps even to build a nuclear weapon, would rise inside Iran. Indeed, the Arab Spring’s secular, citizenship-based mobilisations would likely lose further influence to Iran – threatening to turn that movement into something closer to an ‘Islamic Spring’.

Nuclear weapons-free zone

At the end of the day the crisis can only be solved through negotiations, not threats and force. Immediately, that means demanding that the White House engage in serious, not deliberately time-constrained negotiations to end the current crisis - perhaps based on the successful Turkish-Brazilian initiative that the US scuttled last year. That means that Congress must reverse its current position to allow the White House to use diplomacy - rather than continuing to pass laws that strip the executive branch of its ability to put the carrot of ending sanctions on the table in any negotiations. And it means an Iran policy based on the real conclusions of US intelligence and military officials, that Iran does not have and is not building a nuclear weapon, rather than relying on lies about non-existent nuclear weapons, like the WMD lies that drove the US to war in Iraq.

In the medium and longer term, we must put the urgent need for a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East back on the table and on top of our agenda. Such a multi-country move would insure Iran would never build a nuclear weapon, that Israel would give up its existing 200 to 300 high-density nuclear bombs and the submarine-based nuclear weapons in its arsenal, and that the US would keep its nuclear weapons out of its Middle East bases and off its ships in the region’s seas. Otherwise, we face the possibility of the current predicament repeating itself in an endless loop of Groundhog Day-style nuclear crises, each one more threatening than the last.

The facts
The label: #j14, in Twitter format, means 14 July, the day on which Israel’s uprising began. It is a way of showing that Israeli protesters are emulating the uprisings in Egypt (tagged #Jan25), Bahrain (#Feb14), Syria (#Mar15), Spain (#15M) and so on.
The media star: Daphni Leef, 25, is the woman who pitched the first tent on trendy Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv to protest that she could not afford to rent an apartment in the city. Her action – and her Facebook page – inspired thousands. Within days, hundreds of tents lined the boulevard and dozens of other encampments appeared up and down the country, as well as in less privileged parts of Tel Aviv. Leef came to symbolise the protest, although she has repeatedly denied being its leader. She has come under personal attack from journalists and politicians opposed to the protest movement. In one case an anchor on a TV financial programme challenged her live on air to explain why she had not completed her military service (she has epilepsy).
The gap: The average income of the richest 10 per cent of Israel’s population is about 14 times that of the poorest 10 per cent. Recent years have seen a widening gap between rich and poor, echoing that of the US.
The cost of housing: Between 2005 and 2011, the cost of apartment rents rose by 34 per cent countrywide, and by 49 per cent in the metropolitan region of Gush Dan, including Tel Aviv.
Public support: On 2 August, polls suggested that the protests had the backing of a staggering 98 per cent of Kadima (opposition) supporters and 85 per cent of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s party, Likud, supporters.
The official demands of the protests (not final): A general shift back from neoliberal policies to a welfare state; an end to privatisation of state-owned enterprises; more resources for affordable public housing and transport; free schooling from an early age; a new taxation system lowering indirect taxes and increasing direct taxation. Demands for equality for Israel’s Arab citizens have been put forward but not officially adopted.
Participating movements (partial list): A movement for affordable and public housing; a movement of doctors and specialist registrars for better working conditions; movements of social workers, psychologists and teachers for better working conditions and for better public mental healthcare and education systems; single-parent families and young couples with children demanding free nursery age schooling; a movement for reduction of prices in dairy products; a movement of farmers opposing imports of dairy products; manpower company employees; trade unions; student unions; Arab rights groups; settlers’ groups (withdrawn in July); human rights groups; peace groups; socialist and radical-leftist groups…
Decision-making: By ‘popular assembly’ in the encampments, inspired by similar assembly committees in Madrid’s May protests.
Committees: In July, Netanyahu appointed Professor Manuel Trajtenberg to head a committee to recommend ways of meeting the demands of the protesters. He undermined his own decision a few days later when he said he could not guarantee he would follow the committee’s recommendations. The protesters established their own committee of 60 experts, chaired by radical leftist Professor Yossi Yonah and divided according to themes such as healthcare, labour and so on.

Across the rocky ravine Mohammed points to a handful of tents and small wooden structures covered in tarpaulins that sit behind a wire fence.

‘We had to rebuild inside the cemetery this time. We know the Israelis won’t demolish there; it is the only amount of respect they show us.’

Appearing on no published map, the village of Al-Arakib lies down an unmaintained track that veers sharply off the side of a motorway in Israel’s southern Negev desert. As one of over 40 ‘unrecognised’ villages in the region not only is its existence ignored by the state, but as if to affirm its official invisibility the authorities have subjected it to repeated demolitions in the last twelve months, on each occasion met with a reconstruction effort by local villagers who refuse to give up their land.

While portrayed by the authorities as an isolated dispute over planning laws, campaigners argue that the plight of Al-Arakib illustrates a deliberate strategy pursued by Israel to remove the indigenous Palestinian Bedouin population.

The history of the matter can be traced back to a 1965 planning law that devised a register of towns and villages throughout the country. While innocuous in appearance, ignored by the survey were 123 Palestinian villages which as a result became classified as ‘unrecognised’. Of these, 45 were villages home to Bedouin Arabs in the Negev desert. In conjunction with a 1953 law that transferred over 90 per cent of Negev land to the ownership of the state, the presence of the Bedouin and their buildings was consequently considered illegal – despite having been there long before the creation of Israel.

As part of the Palestinian Arab population, the Bedouin were traditionally distinguished by their nomadic lifestyle, roaming according to the season for grazing purposes but often with a station to which they returned in winter. As this way of life gradually disappeared the villages eventually became their permanent bases.

‘Al-Arakib is over 100 years old,’ explains Mohammed. He adds that deeds conferring legal title to the land are disregarded by the authorities: ‘I have the papers to prove my family owns the land; it was bought by my great-grandfather in Ottoman times. But they don’t care.’

Due to their unrecognised status the villages are refused basic municipal services such as running water and electricity – despite the Bedouin being Israeli citizens. Until a year ago Al-Arakib operated autonomously with electricity provided by petrol generators and water transported to its 300 residents by the costly means of tanker-trucks.

But a year ago the Israel Land Authority (ILA), which claims ownership of the land, sought to resolve the dispute for once and all – by force. In an offensive that involved an estimated 1,500 police, helicopters and bulldozers, 46 structures were destroyed on 27 July 2010 as the village was razed to the ground, with tear gas and plastic bullets deployed t quell the villagers’ resistance. This would set the pattern of subsequent demolitions which have been repeated 24 times in one year.

‘My home was over there,’ points Mohammed to a wooden shack covered by a plastic sheet. ‘It cost me $20,000 to build and they demolished it and gave me no compensation. It is humiliation; sometimes they bring young Israeli children to watch and laugh. How are my children to live here, with no water to wash their clothes?’

Like many of the residents, Mohammed divides his time between the village and another home he has in a nearby town where he sends his children to school. For the situation of Al-Arakib villagers is not one of homelessness but one of forced displacement, as explains Oren of Active Stills, a photography collective that documents the occupation: ‘Many of the villagers live in other towns or stay with relatives. After 1948 it was Israel’s policy to force the Bedouin to move into concentration towns in order to force them from the land that the Zionists wanted for Jews exclusively’.

The realisation of this plan is borne out by demographic statistics: while the 180,000 Bedouin living in the Negev comprise 27 per cent of its population, they occupy only 5 per cent of its land. Half of them live in Israeli planned urban townships where there is no space for owning animals or growing food.

From the summit of the cemetery you can see a ring of green specks that encircle the village lands. These young trees are part of a multimillion pound forestry initiative, Blueprint Negev, intended to ‘make the desert bloom’. Their planting is another concerted step towards the uprooting of indigenous people in the Negev.

In the words of the Jewish National Fund (JNF) Blueprint Negev is a ‘major initiative to revitalise Irasel’s southern region’ through a ‘visionary plan to increase the population of the area and improve living standards for all its inhabitants’. Yet it evidently does not take into consideration the interests of all the Negev’s inhabitants. The $600m plan has been criticised by anti-occupation activists both as a cover to remove the indigenous inhabitants and an excuse to erase any traces of their villages. In turn the JNF, a para-legal organization which indirectly and directly manages 93% of Israeli state land, has been singled out by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign as an integral part of the Israeli colonisation process due to its discriminatory policy of refusing to lease land to non-Jews. Nevertheless the JNF continues to enjoy charitable status in scores of countries, including the UK.

In addition the ecological credentials of the plan have faced intense scrutiny. According to savethenegev.org, planting of a single species of non-native pine trees is unsustainable as it provides no support for other plant and animal species while the destruction of native species disturbs the equilibrium of the ecosystem.

This rings true in the experience of Mohammed: ‘Around the village there used to be hundreds of olive trees. But they uprooted them all’, he says with a sweeping gesture towards the open rocky plains, ‘and now there is nothing’.

The villagers’ resilience is being increasingly tested, according to an elderly woman who speaks through an interpreter. ‘My house was on flat land, so before we could rebuild it after each demolition. But now they have purposely dug up the land so it is no longer flat. Instead there are the trenches for the trees to be planted. We cannot receive any building materials because the Israelis threaten tractor drivers with fines or revocation of their licenses if they come, and the army takes away what they demolish’.

In parallel to the peaceful resistance of villagers on the ground – and the many Israeli and international solidarity activists who visit Al-Arakib to help defend and reconstruct homes – there is a long-running legal campaign fighting for the recognition of the villages.

‘A number of villages have been recognised in recent years,’ says a spokesperson for the Negev Coexistence Forum for Civil Equality, ‘however, when you visit these villages it is difficult to see the difference in the standard of living between them and those that have not been recognised. Many of them still do not have an approved detailed local outline plan that would allow residents to obtain building permits and build legally.’

Furthermore a recent government plan to resolve the land conflict issue would result in the Bedouin receiving recognition to only 30-40 per cent of that to which they lay claim. ‘In short, there is still a long road ahead until justice is achieved in the Negev for all its residents’.

In the top corner of the perimeter fence of the Al-Arakib cemetery stand a clump of the distinctive white marble headstones that mark Muslim graves; for protection from the bulldozers the remaining villagers have decamped within its borders. Yet some say that they fear even this will not deter the demolitions.

‘Of course they will continue to demolish,’ says Mohammed, looking over as children throw rocks across the ravine. ‘But the people are strong. That is what is important’.

They are protesting against the two parties which have ruled Kurdistan for the past two decades. After the uprising against Saddam Hussein in 1991, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), led by Jalal Talabani, and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), led by Massoud Barzani, took control of the country, and, after a civil war between them ended in stalemate, divided it between them and have jointly ruled it ever since.

While they have been warmly received by western governments, keen to present Iraqi Kurdistan as an example of the success of their policy towards Iraq, they have enriched themselves and their parties as they have split Kurdistan’s resources and wealth between them. Talabani and his PUK followers take a cut of everything that goes through the south-east of the country, while Barzani and his KDP enjoy the same in their north western fiefdom. Government positions are exchanged to maintain this mutually beneficial consensus: Talabani is President of Iraq, Barzani president of Kurdistan. The current Prime-Minister is from the PUK, while the President of the Parliament is from the KDP. Two years ago it was the other way round.  This continues down through everyday Kurdish life – getting a job in the public sector mostly relies on membership of one of the parties, depending on where you are for example – and opportunities for backhanders are increasing as more and more multinational companies enter the country, especially interested in the oil under its lands. Both parties owe their power to support from the US, who preferred them to the genuinely popular uprising that first forced Saddam out in 1991, and they have always been happy to go along with the lie that the 2003 war was for the benefit of the Kurdish people.

While this goes on the majority of people in Kurdistan suffer from mass unemployment and lack basic services. Women continue to be treated as second class citizens. Polygamy continues to be accepted and discrimination against women is widespread.

People have running water for one hour every two days and electricity seven hours a day. Infrastructure is crumbling and hospitals lack medicine and services.

Any dissent is punished severely by the parties’ militias, police and security forces, all of which operate according to their own agendas. Political and human rights activists have been killed and opposition parties banned.  The media is heavily censored and those who step outside of these restrictions often pay a heavy price: last year for example Sardasht Osman, a journalist, was murdered by KDP militia for writing an article critical of Barzani and his family’s riches. Even though he was abducted in broad daylight in front of hundreds of witnesses, no-one has been brought to justice for his murder. It is an open secret that elections are unfair and undemocratic: the PUK and KDP have made a pact not to stand against each other in their respective fiefdoms and people are threatened with loss of employment and food entitlements if they do not vote the right way. Opposition activists are arrested and detained. During the last election I was handing out leaflets criticising the PUK and the KDP in Sulaymaniyah when PUK militiamen stopped me and my two comrades, told us we were “making propaganda” and took us to the local jail for a few hours to make their point.

The uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt encouraged people into action against this. There had been protests against the PUK and KDP before (even though a law was passed earlier this year banning demonstrations not sanctioned by the authorities) but the strength shown by people and workers in Egypt and Tunisia provided extra inspiration.

Repression against the demonstrations started immediately and has been severe. On the 17 February, 500 of the demonstrators, mostly young men, moved away from the main demonstration to protest directly outside the KDP’s offices. To scare them away, KDP militia took to the rooftops and started throwing stones at the demonstrators, one of whom was hit and knocked to the ground, blood flowing. The demonstrators responded with their own stones and the militia in turn responded with their guns, killing three young men. Repression has continued daily: activists have been arrested, kidnapped; some even had acid thrown in their faces by thugs sent by the government. One journalist critical of the regime woke up to find his car burnt out. In total nine people have been killed, including two children and more than 200 injured.  Videos of the shootings, filmed on mobile phones and circulated on the internet to undermine the attempts of the KDP and PUK controlled media to brand the demonstrators trouble-makers can be found here and here.

The protests grew and people have continued to come out wherever possible onto the streets of cities and towns across Iraqi Kurdistan demanding change (less so in the capital Erbil and in the north-west, where the KDP have stopped people attending demonstrations outright by keeping the militia on the street constantly and closing the university). The main square in Sulaymaniyah has been renamed freedom square and people regularly sleep in it to keep it occupied. The demands of the demonstrators have become more radical, moving from demands for freedom, better services and an end to corruption, to the immediate resignations now being called for. Tahir Hassan, an activist who has been demonstrating every day said last week: “people in Kurdistan don’t just want to change the faces [of their rulers]. They have a problem with the whole system.”

But not a single demand of the uprising has been met and state brutality is increasing as the PUK and KDP remain, for the most part, free from international censure. The UK government has so far stayed silent, sticking to the western line that, since Saddam Hussein was forced out 20 years ago, Iraqi Kurdistan has become the model democracy for the rest of the Middle East to follow. The recent report by the UK’s All Party Parliamentary Group on Kurdistan, for example, celebrated its, “visible and dynamic economic, political and social progress” and called it “a major success story.” The report proves nothing other than the extent to which the group have been seduced by Talabani and Barzani.  Its 19 pages, containing lavish praise for the achievements of the KDP and the PUK were written by the group’s administrator, Gary Kent, who, it turns out, is a paid employee of the Kurdistan Regional Government controlled by the KDP and the PUK! When a group of us involved in the Freedom Umbrella action group, which organises here in the UK in support of the uprising, went to parliament to make our grievances known, the police were called. Kent and his colleagues have been learning from his employers in Kurdistan.

The British support people in Kurdistan really want is from the people, not the government. International pressure was powerful in Egypt and Tunisia and people in Kurdistan are asking for the same support from freedom-loving people here. Come to one of our upcoming demonstrations or send a letter from your organisation, such as those already sent by the Unite and PCS unions. We need the same level of solidarity that was shown against the Iraq war to be shown now for the uprising of the people of Kurdistan and Iraq.

People in Kurdistan are fighting for freedom, equality, dignity and social justice, just like people in Tunisia and Egypt, and just like people in the anti-cuts movement in the UK. We are all in the same fight, to change the capitalist system, to stop people like Talabani, Barzani and Cameron, and to give power to the people and the workers, and to build a human society.

Dashty Jamal is secretary of the International Federation of Iraqi Refugees. For details of demonstrations and events in solidarity with the uprising in Iraqi Kurdistan please see www.federationifir.com

The Iranian revolution and the Islamic Republic that emerged from it are complex, and often contradictory, developments that defy neatly packaged concepts coming from both left and right in the west. It is interesting how the far right and many on the radical left in Europe and the US see eye-to-eye when it comes to Islamist activism. Both view it as deeply reactionary (‘Islamo-fascists’ is a common epithet between the two), with the pat explanation that the only reason that Islamists enjoy such a large following in the Muslim world is because of their ability to either brainwash their followers with religion or buy them off with their vast charitable networks.

The reality is that political Islam has a long and rich history that stretches back over a century, inspiring a wide range of movements across an extremely diverse landscape that stretches from Indonesia to Morocco. Painting this broad movement with a single brush confuses more than it clarifies.

Deep roots in Lebanon

Take the case of Hizbullah, for example. This Shia Muslim resistance movement in Lebanon is often carelessly lumped in with the Islamic revolution in Iran and is rarely seen as an independent entity with its own history and struggle. No doubt there are deep and foundational links between the Islamic Republic and Hizbullah, and Tehran generously funds and supports the Lebanese resistance, but that does not make them one and the same. Nor can it be said that Hizbullah is simply an offshoot or subordinate of Iran. Perhaps the most dynamic and effective social protest movement in the Middle East today, Hizbullah cannot be understood nor fully appreciated from a progressive point of view outside of its Lebanese context and history.

A brief look at Hizbullah’s emergence in the early 1980s and its consequent development into a mass party confirms that it is a home-grown movement with deep roots in Lebanese society. Hizbullah is the culmination of a long, against-all-odds struggle waged by Lebanon’s Shia against a matrix of foes who conspired to keep them locked in a cycle of occupation, impoverishment and political marginalisation.

Long before anyone had heard of Khomeini, Lebanon’s Shia began to take matters into their own hands to fight for dignity and justice, at first within the context of the Arab nationalist (and even communist) movements and later through activist Shi’ism. The move from the former to the latter was a conscious choice for many as the Arab nationalists and the left simply failed to address the sources of Shia discontent.

The streams that fed into the creation of Hizbullah were diverse and not in any way limited to Iranian influence. Some came out of the Palestinian struggle and Lebanon’s many left organisations, while others were university students influenced by the Iraqi Al Da’wa party, and a significant group split from the Amal Movement (another Lebanese Shia party established in the early 1970s).

Ideologically, Hizbullah was heavily influenced by Sayyid Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, a local cleric with a large following among Lebanon’s Shia, including a significant number of Hizbullah members. Mistakenly referred to as the ‘spiritual guide’ of Hizbullah (prompting an assassination attempt against him by the CIA in 1985), Fadlallah has a reputation for his liberal views on social issues and opposes the very idea of clerical rule.

Critical factor

The most critical factor in uniting these disparate forces was neither Khomeini’s influence nor Iran’s money, but Israel’s second occupation of southern Lebanon in the summer of 1982. It is simplistic to think that financial support alone can forge a capable and successful movement such as Hizbullah or even win its unswerving loyalty. The Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) stopped being effective and lost all semblance of unity precisely when it became known as the ‘richest revolutionary movement in the world’.

It is also interesting to look at the experience of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), a party of Iraqi Shia exiles founded on Iranian soil during the Iran-Iraq war. Even in such circumstances, Tehran was unable to mould the competing factions into a coherent party and today SCIRI is accused of cozying up to the US occupation in Iraq. From its inception, the overwhelming priority for Hizbullah was fighting the Israeli occupation, and resistance work in its broadest sense became the backbone of the party’s social and political work. The armed resistance is complemented by a comprehensive set of development and humanitarian institutions that are involved in all manner of activities, ranging from technical assistance to rural farmers to the recently opened high-tech cardiac centre serving the poor southern suburbs of Beirut.

These are classic social welfare agencies with an Islamist twist, such as the infrastructure and reconstruction engineering unit Jihad Al Bina, or the low-interest micro-credit agency Qard Al Hassan (among the largest in the region), or the extensive welfare agency Imdad, run largely by volunteers to assist the poor, among many others. The work of these organisations has profoundly transformed the lives of Hizbullah’s supporters.

Distinct paths

In the early heady days, as Hizbullah burst on the scene fired up by the Islamic revolution in Iran, the party’s founders (mainly clerics) could be accused of adopting uncompromising positions, such as calling for an Islamic revolution in Lebanon. But as early as 1985, before the party had even fully cohered, in one of its first public manifestos (known as the ‘Open Letter’), they were already qualifying their demands for an Islamic state, stating clearly that they didn’t intend to force their religion upon others.

With the end of the long civil war from 1975 to 1991, Hizbullah took further steps to accommodate itself with the Lebanese state and embarked on what is sometimes called a ‘Lebanonisation’ process by participating in the first post-war parliamentary election in 1992. Today, Hizbullah has ministers in the cabinet and has struck a durable alliance with Lebanon’s largest Christian party, something no one could have imagined even a few years ago. The party has also swept municipal elections where it has set an example of good governance – a concept barely known in Lebanon, where corruption reigns supreme.

The two distinct paths that the Iranian and Lebanese revolutionaries took only reflect the kinds of social forces that were involved and the terrain on which they operated. The differences in this case are stunning and naturally lead in very different directions.

The Shia of Lebanon entered the 20th century as a historically and structurally marginalised group that was dominated by feudal-like landowners and a compromised and conservative clergy. In Iran, Shi’ism had been a state religion for nearly 500 years and was almost synonymous with Iranian nationalism, which stretches back thousands of years. Iran’s clergy played a critical role in all of modern Iran’s major upheavals and, even in the darkest days of the last shah, they were respected, if not feared, by the authorities. Lebanon’s Shia may at best be a slight majority in their religiously diverse and divided country, while Iran’s Shia make up 90 per cent of the population, uniting many nationalities and ethnicities under its banner.

The opposite of fundamentalism

Context is critical when looking at Islamist movements, as appearances – and even the pronouncements of the activists themselves – can be deceiving. To judge and appraise Islamism based on its ideology alone misses these important details, particularly as Hizbullah has pioneered a pragmatic and extremely flexible current within political Islam that is increasingly being adopted by others, including Hamas and to a lesser extent the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.

Given their revolutionary Islamist roots and the incredibly challenging Lebanese political terrain, Hizbullah has mastered the art of tactical flexibility while remaining grounded in its core principles. Such a method is the very opposite of ‘fundamentalism’, the blanket label so often used to describe all groups that weave politics and Islam together.

It is tragic that progressives in the west continue to paint such a one-sided picture of Islamist political practice and fail to see the liberatory aspects of the movement. Due largely to Hizbullah’s leadership over the past three decades, the Shia of Lebanon live with some semblance of dignity, liberated from Israeli occupation and terror, secure on their land, with a far brighter future than anyone could have predicted.

For this, and of course for its two defeats of the supposedly invincible Israeli army (in 2000 and 2006), the party is rewarded with the enthusiastic support of millions of Arabs and Muslims across the globe. Such a movement deserves the support and solidarity of those in the west who stand for a just world.

If the European and US left cannot accept the idea that the struggle for a better world can take many shapes and forms, then they are the true fundamentalists.

Bilal El-Amine is a writer living in Beirut, Lebanon