ODFS Director speaks at Reform Club on the subject of 'Middle East Mayhem'

Director of the ODFS, Ribal Al-Assad, spoke to members of the Reform Club Economics Group on the topic of “Middle East Mayhem – the catastrophic war that could have been avoided”.

The audience consisted of many distinguished guests including diplomats, academics and parliamentarians.

The speech Ribal gave read as follows:

Distinguished guests, friends …

… ladies and gentlemen …

… I am delighted to join you this evening.

It is three and a half years since I last addressed the Reform Club about events in the Middle East …

… and a great deal has changed.

Unfortunately most of that change has been very much for the worse.

Some of you might remember that the last time I spoke here I was optimistic about the future of Syria …

… but that my optimism was tempered by pragmatism …

… and an appreciation of the great dangers facing my country.

Sadly, some of my worst fears have been borne out.

Three and a half years ago, I warned that whatever happens in Syria would have profound repercussions in the Arab world and beyond …

… and tragically, what began as a movement for democracy in my country has been hijacked by Islamists and given way to a bloody, regional civil war …

… and one that also threatens the national security of Western countries like the UK …

… and indeed the whole world.

The events of the past several years have vindicated those of us who argued all along that although the regime in Syria is tyrannical and must be changed…

… which is why we are in this situation today …

… the so-called rebels pose an even greater threat to the people of Syria, the region and the world.

Everyone now understands the need to defeat the militants of Islamic State …

… but we must recognise that it is pointless to beat them unless we also take on all of the other Islamist groups who share exactly the same perverted ideology …

… whether Al-Nusra, the Islamic Front, the Muslim Brotherhood or any others.

The issue is not the 'brand name', but the underlying ideology.

These Islamist militants not only now control huge swathes of Syria and Iraq …

… but Islamic State and Al-Nusra fighters have also encroached into Lebanon …

… where they have killed civilians, kidnapped and executed Lebanese soldiers and policemen and even imposed Sharia law.

In Egypt, where an Islamist government was deposed by the military with popular support, militants continue to carry out attacks on police and soldiers in Sinai …

… and last month wounded ten people in a bomb attack on Cairo University in the heart of the capital.

In Libya, the situation is much worse …

… as the country was completely destabilised in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, and has become a hotbed of Islamism …

… fuelling militant insurgencies as far south as Mali and Nigeria …

… where only this week, Boko Haram slaughtered dozens of schoolboys in a bomb blast.

Meanwhile, following the success of the Houthi rebellion in Yemen, there is a real danger of conflict in the Arabian peninsula …

… as Saudi Arabia sees the Iranian-backed Houthis as a threat on its own doorstep.

But there is more to this than merely regional dynamics.

Returning to Syria, Russia is an important ally of the regime …

… and recent developments in Ukraine have driven a wedge between Russia and the West.

This makes tensions over the situation in Syria all the more dangerous.

Moreover, the Ukraine crisis has driven Russia closer to China …

… and the two countries are developing ever closer military and economic ties …

… since Russia feels threatened by NATO expansion, while China is flexing its muscles against a perceived threat of encirclement by the US and its allies.

China also has extensive oil interests in Iraq …

… and has been threatened as much as the rest of the world by Al-Qaeda and Islamic State …

… which claim the Chinese province of Xinjiang as the eastern limit of their self-styled Caliphate.

China blames Turkey for encouraging terror attacks in Xinjiang …

… and it has been suggested that it could back Turkey's Kurdish militants in retaliation.

All this is very ominous for the embattled people of Syria and the surrounding region.

So how did the conflict in Syria become the focal point of global tensions?

There are a variety of factors that explain the tragic turn of events …

… but I will begin with the one perhaps of most interest to all of you …

… the role of the international community.

There was understandable excitement in the West when the Arab Spring began …

… and the world shared the optimism of the millions of people hoping to overthrow their tyrannical rulers …

… but although well-intentioned, the response of Western governments has often been naive and even counterproductive …

… and nowhere more so than in Syria.

When I spoke here three years ago, I welcomed the fact that the EU had just that day brought in an arms embargo and asset freezes against the Syrian regime …

… but sadly, many in the West felt it was a good idea not only to prevent the regime from acquiring more arms …

… but also to stand back while some of our allies in the Gulf states

armed the rebels …

… and as I have argued all along, this was a terrible mistake.

While some have argued that the West itself did nothing to support the rebels, in fact the US did recently begin to equip and train Syrian fighters in camps in Jordan …

… with disastrous consequences …

… because many if not most of those arms ended up in the hands of Islamist extremists like Islamic State and Al-Nusra.

That strategic blunder was a consequence of a more fundamental political miscalculation.

Western governments took a back seat and allowed others to take the lead on Syria.

As a result, some states in the Gulf, which cared little about freedom or democracy …

… and were worried about the domino effect of the Arab Spring ensured extremist elements dominated the opposition …

… and we have all seen the results.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar channelled billions of dollars and later arms to their Islamist clients, while the democratic world stood by.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, along with other Western countries, even recognised the Syrian National Council …

… apparently not noticing it was overwhelmingly populated by members of the Muslim Brotherhood …

… and it took Clinton 18 months to realise it did not represent the Syrian people.

As late as September last year, new Secretary of State John Kerry claimed at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee meeting that there was “no” al-Qaeda presence in Syria …

… long after its presence had been established beyond doubt.

Last August, Michael Morell, the outgoing Deputy Director of the CIA, said extremists returning from Syria are the single biggest threat to US National Security …

… and geography suggests the threat must be exponentially higher in Europe …

… so why did it take nine months for the UK government to respond to his warning?

We have seen that the danger is real, with lone wolf-style attacks all over the world …

… most recently in Canada, but before that in Boston in the US, in Belgium, France, Russia, western China …

… and of course at Woolwich here in London.

At last, the danger has begun to sink in …

… and so has the role of certain Gulf states in fomenting that danger.

US Vice-President Joe Biden recently told students at Harvard University, ‘Our allies in the region were our largest problem in Syria’ …

… because they effectively started a ‘proxy Sunni-Shia war’ in their determination to bring down the Syrian regime.

He also said the US could not convince its allies to stop supplying the extremists …

… but I have to ask, how hard did the Americans try?

It has been reported that the vice president subsequently apologised even for raising the issue ...

… and although he has denied this in the case of Turkey, it is clear that the US has not been as forthright as it should be in holding its so-called allies to account.

It is absurd that the most powerful country in the world should be apologising for telling the truth …

… rather than going further and acting on this knowledge to put a stop to such activities.

Moreover, the rest of the world should take his words as a wake-up call.

As I will discuss a little later, it is time for democratic countries to rethink who are our friends and allies …

… so I was encouraged to read that Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the chair of the UK Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee …

… has warned that Qatar, for one, 'must choose their friends or live with the consequences'.

I hope that many others will take a lead from Vice President Biden and Sir Malcolm, and take a stand on this issue.

But I now want to say something about another of those dubious allies …

… Turkey.

Three years ago, I explained that Syria was in a unique political position in the Middle East …

… allied with both Iran and Turkey.

Both see Syria as crucial to their ambitions …

… Iran because it sees it as essential to its natural expansion and access to the Mediterranean …

… creating the perfect crescent from Iraq, through Syria to Lebanon …

… strengthening Iran's geopolitical clout as the champions of the Shias …

… and Turkey because it sees Syria as the natural place to extend its influence south into the Arab world …

… cutting off Iran and sealing Turkey's own role as the champion of the Sunnis …

… effectively rebuilding the Ottoman Empire.

So when the Arab Spring started, Turkey not only backed the opposition, but encouraged the most reactionary, extremist elements within it …

… and when the opportunity arose, it enacted its long-held plans to replace the regime with a government of its ally then and now …

… the Muslim Brotherhood.

As I’m sure you know, although Turkey is a member of NATO and supposedly a close ally of the West, its ruling Justice and Development Party has a clear Islamist agenda.

The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan once notoriously announced, ‘Democracy is just the train we board to reach our destination’ …

… and before entering government he was even imprisoned for publicly reciting a poem with the lines, ‘The mosques are our barracks …

… the domes our helmets …

… the minarets our bayonets …

… and the faithful our soldiers.’

He later learned to moderate the message, but in government his party has followed a process of creeping Islamisation …

… reshaping the judiciary, the press, the business world, education and even the military.

In its 2014 Freedom of the Press report, the American-based watchdog Freedom House downgraded Turkey from ‘Partly Free to ‘Not Free’.

Of course, Turkey remains a secular state and is not under Sharia Law …

… but the transformation of the country in recent years serves as a case study of what Islamists can do by purely political means …

… in contrast, for example, to the Muslim Brotherhood-led government in Egypt …

… which showed its hand too quickly and was deposed by the military with popular support.

The change is perhaps clearest of all in Turkey’s foreign policy …

… with Erdogan effectively attempting to rebuild what was once the Ottoman Empire …

… and countering Iranian hegemony by being the champion of the Sunnis just as Iran styles itself as the champion of the Shias.

It is a strategy that can only lead to further sectarian conflict …

… and of course Syria is at the heart of that strategy.

Turkey has now got itself into an almost impossible situation, trying to balance its international alliances with its strategic interests in Syria.

Kobani posed a particular dilemma, as Turkey was faced with either helping the Kurds and angering its Islamist clients …

… or implicitly backing the latter, and enraging the 20 million Kurds in Turkey itself, which indeed is exactly what happened.

Meanwhile, even as IS encircling the Kobani, Al-Nusra is advancing on another Kurdish town of Afrin …

… so the situation will only get worse.

Even before the uprising in Syria, though, Turkey got involved by mediating between the regime and the Muslim Brotherhood …

… and when they saw the opportunity to make their move, they assembled the Syrian National Council in Istanbul …

… stacked from the very beginning with members of the Muslim Brotherhood …

… and, with the backing and support of Qatar, they effectively hijacked the revolution from outside Syria itself, as the West stood by.

If the West had given a similar platform to opponents of the Syrian regime who share its own secular, democratic values, they might have stood a chance …

… but in the absence of any such platform, their voices were drowned out by those of the Islamists …

… and the uprising was Islamicised.

Former US ambassador to Syria Robert Ford later said, ‘the Syrian opposition never presented any credible programme for transition’ …

… but this was precisely because the only 'opposition' he chose to talk to was Islamist!

What programme did Ambassador Ford expect from people whose ideology is based on Sharia law?

At the same time, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar all gave military support to various rebel groups in Syria …

… which were overwhelmingly Islamist in character.

Matters are made worse by the fact that Saudi Arabia and Qatar are competing for dominance …

… with the former backing Salafi and Wahhabi factions, and the latter backing the Muslim Brotherhood and Nusra Front …

… with more funds and weapons arriving to fan the flames as the situation escalates.

Even the supposedly moderate Free Syrian Army, which was recognised by the US, had a Supreme Military Council made up exclusively of Salafi extremist groups from the very beginning.

After the Iranian-American rapprochement, they abandoned the FSA to form the Islamic Front on orders from their backers in Saudi Arabia …

… taking American weapons with them.

So we must at this point be clear that there is no meaningful distinction between ‘extremist’ and ‘moderate’ Islamist groups in Syria.

This was a mistake made from the very start.

In fact, an Al-Nusra commander told CNN last month that US airstrikes against IS have only united the various factions against a common enemy …

… as their shared strategic interests come into line with their identical ideologies.

During a recent offensive by Al-Nusra in the northern province of Idlib, supposedly moderate rebels including those of Harakat Hazm, who had been heavily armed and trained by the US …

… surrendered or defected to Al-Nusra …

… and once again, US arms, including advanced anti-armour missile systems, have ended up in the hands of IS and Al-Nusra.

For this reason, it is almost incredible that the US is planning to train and arm more rebel fighters …

… even if the numbers of 5,000 in one year are less than impressive.

Even worse, this training is to take place in Saudi Arabia …

… with a regime that beheads more people every year than Islamic State ever has (!) …

… and which believes in Sharia law, just like IS itself …

… so what democratic values are they going to learn there? (!)

This time, we're told trainees will be 'vetted from scratch' to ensure they are not extremists …

… which is surely a tacit admission that the previous rebels backed by the US were not properly vetted …

… and that the efforts of the past four years have failed.

But how would one do this anyway?

Will the Americans interview each one to ensure he is a genuine democrat and not an Islamist?

Or perhaps outsource this 'vetting' to some of our allies in the Gulf?

These are the very same allies who have fomented a regional sectarian war …

… opening the gates to Hell and unleashing flames it could take decades to douse.

While their enemies in Iran back the Syrian regime, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar back extremists who believe in establishing an Islamic Caliphate State under Sharia law …

… and in killing anyone who does not share their twisted and perverted ideology.

Indeed, just last year, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia publicly endorsed the Egyptian cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi’s call for Sunnis to wage jihad or holy war …

… on the so-called infidel Shias and Alawites.

Moreover, as I have mentioned, there is now an escalation of the geopolitical proxy war.

The Syrian regime has asked Russia to deliver a shipment S300 anti-aircraft missiles they ordered, but which were put on hold.

It wants them urgently because it fears the US will now take on government forces as well as extremists.

So I hope it is clear by now that the conflict in Syria is much more than a civil war …

… and has been fuelled by external interference.

Another aspect of the internationalisation of the conflict is the influx of foreign fighters …

… with great confusion about the actual numbers.

British MP Khaled Mahmoud has recently said there are 2,000 British fighters …

… while a German security official estimates there 1,800 Germans …

… far more than previous estimates of a few hundred, which Western governments have preferred to stick to in order to prevent panic.

The latest CIA and UN estimate is that there are a total of 15,000 foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq.

But US Attorney General Eric Holder has said there are around 7,000 fighters from the West alone …

… which would leave only 8,000 from other Arab and Muslim countries.

Logically, though, there must be far more fighters from Arab and Muslim countries than Western ones.

The population is poorer, the governments have less sophisticated surveillance technology and infrastructure …

… and there are a lot more mosques and clerics who are funded by some of our allies in the Gulf countries to recruit people.

Indeed, a Syrian report estimates that in total there are not just 15,000 but almost 54,000 foreign combatants from 87 different countries.

Given the international character of those involved, there is a clear danger of yet more attacks beyond the region.

In the words of Attorney General Eric Holder, ‘If they are able to consolidate their gains in that area, I think it’s just a matter of time before they start looking outward …

… and start looking at the West’.

This makes it all the more crucial that the international community addresses all the factors driving the current conflict.

One factor that has not been widely recognised is the role of former Baathists in Iraq …

… removing members of the brutal dictator Saddam Hussein’s Baathist party from positions of power …

… but the unintended consequence was effectively to disenfranchise millions of soldiers, administrators and public servants …

… who also mostly happened to be members of the Sunni minority …

… leaving them alienated from the new government …

… with no job and no stake in the new Iraq.

The short-sightedness of de-Baathification became apparent as soon as US troops were withdrawn …

… and thousands of those former soldiers in the north of Iraq joined an insurgency against the government.

This insurgency is led by Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri …

… a former top military commander and vice president in the Saddam government …

… and now the real puppet master controlling IS.

While some observers have noted some kind of relationship between IS and former Baathists, I will put it more bluntly …

… the former Baathists actually set up IS to serve their own strategic aims.

The Baathists took advantage of the civil war in Syria …

… and the funding, propaganda and political support available from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and their militant clerics …

… to establish a jihadist group with the sole aim of terrifying the international community.

This is the bigger picture we must grasp in order to understand the recent success of IS …

… and it explains both how, as has recently been reported, they have acquired chemical weapons …

… which had been stashed by former members of Saddam’s regime …

… and how they got pilots to train them to fly the war planes they captured in Syria when they took the Tabqa military air base and slaughtered hundreds of soldiers.

It also explains how Islamic State captured Mosul so fast and so easily.

You see, although black IS flags now fly over the city, it is actually the Baathists who run the place …

… former military officers, who already enjoyed the support of many civilians and even police.

Sympathetic Iraqi troops simply surrendered and joined the insurgents.

In fact, former Iraqi interior minister Falah al-Naqib has estimated that IS militants make up no more than 15 percent of the anti-government forces in Iraq …

… it is the tip of a much bigger spear, with a very different agenda.

The group's original name, ISIS or ISIL, meaning, 'Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant' …

… refers to the Sunni majority area across Iraq and Syria, which they now control.

The subtle change of that group's name to simply 'Islamic State' was a not-so-subtle threat …

… coinciding as it did with messages of support from the Pakistani Taliban, and raising the threat of global jihad rather than just regional conflict.

The message was that if we want to get rid of IS, we have to talk to the former Baathists.

Their leader Al-Douri now heads a militant group called the Naqshbandi, ostensibly a Sufi order, but really a new brand name for the Baathists …

… to spare the blushes of the international community when they finally agree to engage with them.

When and if that happens, they will reveal their own agenda and put their terms for getting rid of IS …

… either a state of their own or full representation in a future Iraqi government.

Former General Muzhir al Qaisi told the BBC in the summer that the former Baathists are much stronger than what he called the 'barbarians' of IS …

… and they could easily defeat them if they needed to.

Clearly, they are waiting for an incentive.

So we must understand that videos of foreign fighters beheading civilians are part of the Baathists' strategy …

… but their ultimate goal is not a caliphate, the avowed goal of IS …

… but in the words of another senior Baathist, ‘getting rid of this sectarian government, ending this corrupt army and negotiating to form a Sunni Region’.

In fact, the Iraqi government is not sectarian, but its exclusion of former Baathists who happen to be mostly Sunni certainly makes it less than representative.

In July, Al-Douri’s group even issued a statement condemning sectarianism and the persecution of Christians and Yazidis.

Having shown the world the most terrifying face of militant Islamism in the form of the Islamic State …

… the Baathists in a new guise seek to present themselves as the moderate alternative.

If they are now ready to turn on their erstwhile allies, so much the better …

… but we must have no illusions about their role in setting them up in the first place …

… and the origin of this problem in the misguided policy of de-Baathification.

There is also a lesson here for Syria.

You see, people in most of the Arab world do not understand democracy in terms of equality of all under the rule of law …

… regardless of religion, ethnic group, sect, gender …

… but simply as the majority ruling over everyone else …

… a zero sum game …

… thus it is vital that the West does not make the same mistake by excluding any group from an eventual political settlement in Syria.

Meanwhile, it is vital that Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria are defeated with the support of the full UN Security Council …

… otherwise, given the geopolitical tensions I have described, we could start to see elements of the community working against each other instead of the Islamists.

And if we are serious about airstrikes, the current rate of five a day is nothing compared to 85 a day in Afghanistan in 2001 and 800 a day in Iraq in 2003 …

… and over about three months more than 800 airstrikes have killed just 810 Islamists.

That amounts to just one extremist Islamist per airstrike …

… which is certainly not sufficient or sustainable.

In any case, ultimately it will not be possible to defeat IS by military means alone …

… because as long as some Gulf countries continue to allow clerics and media to incite hatred, violence and killing …

… and as long as they allow funding and recruitment to continue …

… there will always be plenty of new fighters to answer the call and take the place of those who are eliminated.

So the world must tackle not just the black-clad jihadists charging around the desert with machine guns …

… but also the radical clerics inciting them to kill from the comfort of their mosques …

… and recruiting yet more fighters from around the world via hate-filled propaganda on satellite TV and websites …

… all with the backing of their governments, our supposed allies.

For too long, the international community has turned a blind eye to Saudi Arabia and Qatar backing the militants now tearing the middle East apart …

… and supporting groups who share their ideology throughout the world.

Until this is stopped, there can be no military solution to extremism.

The growing strength of Islamist influence in Saudi Arabia …

… partly because of the complacency of the West …

… was revealed just last week, when the Information Minister Abdulaziz Khoja closed down a satellite TV station that was inciting sectarian hatred and violence.

He was promptly sacked …

… and the TV station reopened (!)

This is despite the fact that the minister would never have shut down the station in the first place without the approval of the King …

… which shows that even the King does not have the political clout to deal effectively with the problem.

In this context, we cannot continue to count such countries as our allies.

The geopolitical rationale for allying with many of the states concerned was rooted in a different world …

… one dominated by Cold War tensions …

… and the need to secure oil supplies.

On that note, the conflict in Syria and Iraq means oil prices should be going up …

… but instead they are going down …

… so we would expect Saudi Arabia to cut back production in order to reverse the fall …

… but it has not done so for geopolitical reasons.

With the backing of the US, it is keeping its oil flowing to punish Iran and Russia for their stance over Syria …

… and to put pressure on Russia regarding Ukraine and Iran with nuclear talks ongoing.

While oil remains an important factor in geopolitics, however, for the US, at least, shale gas and other technologies are lessening dependency on oil …

… which means it no longer needs to accommodate certain supposed allies in the Gulf.

More generally, the end of the Cold War means there is no need to sustain alliances formed in the shadow of war with the Soviet Union …

… when those very alliances threaten global stability more than the East-West tensions they are unnecessarily fuelling.

Indeed, Western nations need to show the same commitment to defeating Islamism as they did in confronting the Soviet Union …

… especially as this time the enemy is not a rational and pragmatic state with an interest in avoiding mutual destruction …

… but a dangerous ideology whose adherents are willing to kill indiscriminately in pursuance of an Islamist Caliphate stretching from Xinjiang to Andalucia …

… and think they will be rewarded if they are killed.

So given all I have described, we must staunchly oppose all regimes that are implicated in one of the greatest threats to regional stability and our own national security …

… global Islamic extremism.

I said last time I was here that I was optimistic …

… and events since then have given me plenty of reasons to abandon that optimism …

… but I am still optimistic.

I am optimistic because I believe that the values of freedom and democracy are the right values …

… infinitely superior to a poisonous ideology based on a distorted interpretation of Islam …

… and I believe the great majority of people throughout the Middle East and North Africa want to live in a free and democratic country …

… as well as a safe and peaceful one.

It took the Europe hundreds of years to put sectarian and religious wars behind it …

… and to develop stable and secure democratic societies …

… and of course it is only 25 years this month since the fall of the Berlin Wall …

… and the emergence of Eastern Europe from the shadow of tyranny.

The West can help the rest of the world to learn from that experience …

… by promoting freedom and democracy through education and the cultivation of civil society in places like the Middle East and North Africa …

… investing in youth, infrastructure and economic incentives that offer an alternative to the lure of extremism.

We must defeat the Islamists in Syria in Iraq and everywhere else

We must shut down their basis of financial and political support

We must put our values of freedom and democracy at the heart of everything we do.

We can defeat extremism if we hold true to our values …

… and form alliances with countries and movements who share them.

Thank you for listening.