The Muslim Brotherhood (11 page)

Hadid’s more revolutionary ideas resonated with the younger generation in Hamah and he soon developed his own group of followers, many of whom were still in secondary school. In 1964 this group came into direct conflict with the new Ba’athist state during a stand-off with the security services that resulted in Hadid and his followers taking refuge in the Sultan mosque.
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The new Ba’athist regime responded by attacking the mosque with tanks and artillery, bringing the sixty-foot minaret crashing to the ground and leaving 115 dead.
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Hadid and those of his companions who survived the assault were arrested and sentenced to death. However, Hadid was later released after an intervention by Mohamed al-Hamid, who pleaded his case with President Amin al-Hafez.

This experience did not deter the young Hadid, who after his release took to walking the streets wearing only a white jelaba, as if trying to create an iconic image of himself as a humble and devout man. Hardened by his prison experience, Hadid’s resolve to bring down the Ba’athist regime was stronger than ever. Yet where in earlier years he had appeared like a reckless hothead, his agenda was now in line with the increasingly radical mood of the time and he had no problem in drawing recruits. He set up the Fighting Vanguard, sending its members for military training in Palestinian Fateh camps in the Jordan Valley, and by the mid-1970s this underground group was carrying out targeted assassinations of figures within the Syrian regime. However, Hadid was tracked down and arrested in 1976 and died in prison following a hunger strike and sustained torture.

Although the Fighting Vanguard was clearly Hadid’s personal creation, the exact nature of its relationship to the Ikhwan remains deeply contentious. The Ikhwani maintain that at the time they had no control over Hadid’s actions and that they did not even know who was perpetrating the attacks. According to Adnan Saad Eddine in 1975:

People started wondering who was committing these killings. We were surprised but we were also embarrassed by it. One day we had a meeting of the Hamah administration in the house of Brother R … It was almost midnight when there was a knock at the door by a brother sent by another brother who said that an assassination attack had taken place in Damascus of a very important person.
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Similarly, Ali Saddredine al-Bayanouni, who had been arrested in 1973, noted, ‘At that time whilst we were in prison, I had no idea who was behind these attacks. When I left prison in 1977 I found that no one knew who was behind them.’
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As such the Ikhwan asserts that Hadid was not acting in its name but only in the name of his own group.

It certainly appears that the Ikhwan’s leadership had endeavoured to contain Hadid and to dissuade him from such reckless action. According to Obeida Nahas, a Syrian brother based in the UK, in 1968 the Ikhwan leadership warned the grass roots that they should not follow Hadid.
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Similarly, al-Bayanouni has stated:

Yes Sheikh Marwan was from the Ikhwan. He was of the opinion that a regime that took over by force can only be removed by force. This was contrary to the approach of the Jama’a. Therefore the Jama’a didn’t respond to his way of thinking and we resisted him through several dialogues. We had continuous dialogue with Sheikh Marwan in Hamah especially.
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Much of this bid to contain Hadid was driven by a fear that his actions, which had already resulted in Issam al-Attar being banned from the country, would bring further trouble for the movement. It seems that in typical Ikhwani style it wasn’t so much the fact that Hadid was prepared to use violence that bothered the leadership, but rather that he was doing so in an unprepared and reckless manner.

Al-Bayanouni has also asserted that because they were unable to convince Hadid to change his stance, the leadership expelled him from the Brotherhood.
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He has also stated that the leadership expelled other elements: ‘Some groups affiliated to Marwan Hadid adopted that name [Fighting Vanguard], but when the Brotherhood found out about their association, it expelled them from the party and cancelled their membership.’
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Yet in direct contradiction to these assertions, Adnan Saad Eddine, who was particularly close to Hadid and who was General Guide at the time, has explained the relationship somewhat differently. ‘Marwan and his like set up an extreme wing of the Ikhwan. He stayed in the Ikhwan and he didn’t leave it. We never kicked him out. But he had a wing that behaved the way it saw fit – it had nothing to do with the leadership.’
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Furthermore, regardless of what they thought about his approach, the Ikhwan was willing to provide Hadid with financial support to enable him to continue his jihad. Adnan Saad Eddine explains:

From his hideout he sent someone to me asking for support. I sent him two brothers … They met with him and told him what I thought of him and that I believed his programme would not bear any fruit and that it would be harmful to him and others. However, they told him that if he wanted financial support to cover his expenses we would give it to him.
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Moreover, the Ikhwan maintained links to the Fighting Vanguard right up until the Hamah events through Riyath Jamour, who was the secret
link between the two groups and whose confession under torture led the regime to engage in a number of arrests of the Brotherhood.

Some of this ambiguity may be attributed to the fact that the Syrian Ikhwani have always had a contradictory relationship to Hadid. They have rejected his reckless approach but he has also commanded great respect on account of the heroism of his struggle. Hadid went beyond the Brotherhood, capturing the imagination of many Syrians, and when his death was announced there were large demonstrations in several cities. As such, there is still a great reverence for him inside the Ikhwan. Hasnawi, for example, referred to him as the movement’s ‘first mujahid’.
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In spite of the Syrian Ikhwan’s revisionist approach to its own history, it is difficult for it to completely dismiss or disown a figure such as Hadid who was viewed as a martyr and who arguably had more popular support than any of the leadership could ever have commanded. However, the current desperation of the leadership to whitewash their past and to prove that they have moved on has prompted them to do their utmost to distance themselves from Hadid and to play down the ties that were clearly present between them and the Fighting Vanguard.

Hadid’s death was to have the opposite effect of that intended by the Ba’athist authorities, as it acted as a catalyst for further violence. The Fighting Vanguard was taken over by Dr Abdel Sattar al-Zaim, a dentist son of a tradesman who was ‘even better than his Sheikh [Hadid]’,
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and the assassinations and attacks continued. The best known attack, led by Adnan Aqla, was the 1979 assault on the Aleppo Artillery School, which left eighty-three Alawite cadets dead and scores of others wounded. This attack escalated tensions between the Ikhwan and the regime as the authorities blamed the Brotherhood and embarked
upon a widespread campaign to root out and arrest its members. It also precipitated the executions of a number of Ikhwani who were already being held in prison. The regime launched a propaganda campaign and began publishing articles glorifying ‘unorthodox’ movements in Islamic history that had fought against the Sunnis.
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Such moves were felt deeply by the conservative religious Sunni population as a whole and not just the Brotherhood. Clearly the Ikhwan was at crisis point.

By now, however, the Syrian Ikhwan had become like a headless body; it had no leadership that could direct the movement, let alone rein it in. This was because by this point much of the leadership had travelled abroad leaving the rank and file without proper control or direction. As Adnan Saad Eddine explains, ‘By then there was no member of the leadership there to guide the Jama’a. Some were in prison, some had left Syria, some had disappeared. We were in Paris attending an Islamic conference … whilst we were there someone came and told us of the news of the arrests.’
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As the jihadist current had taken root and the state intensified its clampdown on the movement, many key figures within the Syrian Ikhwan simply left the country. Syrian thinker Mohamed Jamal Barot has argued that after they had realised that they could not put the genie back into the bottle without breaking the bottle itself, the leadership fled before the adventure became too strong for them to stomach.
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This absence had a major impact on the Ikhwan’s evolution: many of the younger more militant elements, left without any clear guidance, simply took events into their own hands and the whole movement started to unravel. Adnan Saad Eddine explained: ‘We fragmented. The leadership left. Everyone started behaving the way they wanted.’
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Similarly Hasnawi has remarked: ‘The leadership of Aleppo left for Saudi Arabia and because of the persecution of the state, we the young people took the leadership position. That gave momentum to the violence.’
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These younger cadres deeply resented the fact that their leaders had left them at a time of crisis and this prompted further
recriminations. Adnan Saad Eddine observed: ‘Dislike developed between the brothers in Syria and those in Arab or foreign countries. The brothers inside accused them of leaving their duty behind and of fleeing the al-dawa field. The brothers outside accused those inside of not thinking properly and of being a bit reckless.’
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The already divided movement fractured further. Hasnawi also explained:

Sheikh Abu Ghuddah was outside, even Hassan al-Huwaidi was outside, as were Abdel Kanan and Abdelrahman Qura Hamoud. All of these historical leaders were outside. We understand why they left but not fully. As a result there were differences in experience and age. We were in crisis … Because the leadership wasn’t there our secret work wasn’t linked up. We were separate groups and not one
tanzeem
as such.
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Although Adnan Saad Eddine was clear that ‘any unequal battle with the very hated regime’
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would be disastrous for the Ikhwan, he was clearly in no position to do anything about the increasing violence from outside the country. He did engage in vain attempts to bring the more militant elements under his control but these were largely futile. He was often the last to know about what was going on inside his own movement. He claims that in the mid-1970s he was shocked to discover that some Ikhwani groups were stockpiling weapons and tried to dissuade them. He has also asserted that whilst he was abroad the Ikhwan’s Shura Council took the decision to engage in weapons training, something he asserts was reversed after he found out about it and threatened to resign.
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By this point the jihadist current had developed its own momentum and such moves were too little, too late. The Ikhwan’s weak and fragmented leadership could do little but sit back and watch events unfold.

And unfold they did. By the early 1980s it appeared as though Syria was on the brink of a popular revolution. Spurred on in part
by events in Iran the year before, in March 1980 there were massive demonstrations and protests against the regime after it dissolved the unions that called for an end to oppression and they were backed by the Brotherhood. A general strike was also called in Aleppo, and it soon spread to Hamah, Idlib and other major towns. Posters began appearing in cities such as Aleppo demanding a commitment to Sharia law in all legislation and an end to the state of emergency in Syria.
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In June 1980 there was an assassination attempt on President al-Assad and in retaliation the authorities carried out a massacre in the Tadmur prison, where many Ikhwani were being held, killing between 600 and 1,100 prisoners in their cells. The authorities also introduced Law No. 49 which made membership of the Brotherhood punishable by death.

It was at this time, when the whole country was like a powder keg waiting to go up, that the Ikhwan’s leadership finally decided to act. Once it looked as though the regime was about to be toppled and a popular revolution might be a reality, the ever-opportunist Ikhwan did its utmost to capitalise on the situation and to ensure that it would be there to reap the spoils should such an outcome ensue. The Ikhwani jumped to take control of the Islamist current and in August 1980 the leadership issued a letter calling upon all Syrian mujahideen to close ranks with the Brotherhood under the auspices of a broader, nonpartisan leadership.
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They also established the Islamic Front in Syria, a gathering of Islamist groups of differing persuasions led by the Ikhwan. The most prominent figures in the front included al-Bayanouni, his brother Abu Naser al-Bayanouni and Said Hawa.

In October the front issued a proclamation that read like a political manifesto, laying out its position on a range of political, social and economic issues. The first proclamation, written by Adnan Saad Eddine, was reportedly endorsed by all the branches of the Brotherhood outside of Syria. Its programme was liberal and spoke directly to the interests of the urban Sunni civil trading and manufacturing class, who still felt that their status and wealth were being squeezed by the socialist
policies of the state. It also sought to touch a chord by playing on the sectarian divide, positing the Ikhwani as the main representatives and defenders of the Sunni population against their Alawite rulers. ‘Nine or ten percent of the population cannot dominate the majority in Syria … The Alawi minority has forgotten itself and is ignoring the facts of history.’
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At this time the Syrian Ikhwani united even further. After years of acrimony, the various factions of the movement came together in a show of unity not seen since the 1960s. A new leadership was elected that was represented on the Damascus side by Hassan al-Huwaidi, who was elected as the new General Guide, Muhammad al-Huwari, Abu Nizar and Osama Dandelle and on the Aleppo side by Said Hawa, Adnan Saad Eddine, Ali Saddredine al-Bayanouni and Mohamed Said. Also involved were the Fighting Vanguard who were represented by Adnan Aqla, Adel Fares and two others.
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As Obeida Nahas has explained, ‘At that time all the Ikhwani were in the same shoes and they joined forces with the Fighting Vanguard.’
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He also asserted that at the height of the violence, ‘It came to a point where one couldn’t draw a line between the two factions.’
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Although Adnan Aqla would split again from the Ikhwan just a few months later, the willingness of the other currents to strike such a union at this time suggests that they were more than prepared to accept the more radical ideology in order to see their dream of establishing an Islamic state come true. The same year the Ikhwan also held a meeting in Amman and decided that it would join the armed struggle. Hasnawi has said: ‘because of people’s demands and pressure and all the arrests we decided we had no choice other than to declare resistance’.
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