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| Grand Ayatollah Kazim al-Haeri (above) and Saudi Prince Turki al Faisal (top) |
“First ever fatwa from Qom endorses fighting alongside
Assad,” Saudi Arabia’s newspaper of records, Asharq Alawsat, banners
on its front page today.
The paper was referring to the first public
religious edict issued by a leading Shiite Muslim cleric widely followed by
Iraqi militants permitting Shiites to fight in Syria’s war alongside President
Bashar Assad’s forces.
The
fatwa by Iran-based Grand Ayatollah Kazim al-Haeri, one of the
mentors of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, comes as thousands of Shiite
fighters mostly from Iraq and Lebanon play a major role in the battles.
The
call likely will increase the sectarian tones of the war, which pits overwhelmingly
Sunni Muslim rebels against members of Assad’s Alawite sect, an offshoot of
Shiite Islam.
Al-Haeri
is based in the holy city of Qom, Iran’s religious capital. Among his followers,
according to The Associated Press, are many fighters with the feared Shiite
militia, Asa’eb Ahl al-Haq, or Band of the Righteous, an Iranian-backed group
that repeatedly attacked U.S. forces in Iraq and says it is sending fighters to
Syria. That militia is headed by white-turbaned Shiite cleric Qais al-Khazali,
who spent years in U.S. detention but was released after he was handed over to
the Iraqi government.
Many
Shiite gunmen already fight around the holy shrine of Sayyidah Zaynab just south
of Damascus. The shrine is named after the Prophet Muhammad’s granddaughter and
is popular with Iranian worshippers and tourists.
Asharq
Alawsat says the fatwa sanctions the participation of
Iraqi fighters in the protection of Sayyidah Zaynab shrine as well as in the
defense of Assad’s regime.
Asked
by a follower whether it is legitimate to travel to Syria to fight, al-Haeri
replied: “The battle in Syria is not for the defense of the shrine of Sayyidah
Zaynab but it is a battle of infidels against Islam and Islam should be
defended.”
“Fighting
in Syria is legitimate and those who die are martyrs,” al-Haeri said in
comments posted on his official website. An official at his office confirmed
that the comments are authentic.
Asa’eb
Ahl al-Haq currently has about 1,000 fighters in Syria and many others were
volunteering to go join the war, said Ashtar al-Kaabi, an Asa’eb Ahl al-Haq
member who organizes sending Shiite fighters from Iraq to Syria. Asked whether
the increase is related to al-Haeri’s fatwa, al-Kaabi said: “Yes. This fatwa
has had wide effect.”
The
rebels are mainly backed by Saudi Arabia and Turkey, Sunni powerhouses in the
Middle East.
The
main Western-backed Syrian opposition group, the Syrian National Coalition,
claimed recently that Shiite fighters from 14 different factions are fighting
alongside Assad forces in Syria. The coalition said those fighters are brought
to Syria with the help of Iraq’s Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, another
Iranian pawn.
Lebanon’s
Iran-backed Shiite Hezbollah also openly joined Assad’s forces in May after
hiding its participation for months. Since then, the group has helped Assad forces
recapture a string of towns and villages from rebels.
Separately,
an influential Saudi Arabian prince said on Saturday Assad’s opponents have
been at an impossible disadvantage since the start of the Syrian conflict
because the United States and Britain refused to help them.
The
United States and Britain suspended non-lethal aid to northern Syria last
Thursday after reports that Islamic Front -- a union of six major rebel groups --
had taken buildings belonging to the Free Syrian Army's (FSA) Syrian Military
Council on the border with Turkey.
Former
Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal criticized the decision, saying
the two countries had left the moderate FSA to fend for itself.
"What's
more damaging is that since the beginning of this conflict, since the FSA arose
as a response to Assad's impunity, Britain and the U.S. did not come forward
and provide the necessary aid to allow it to defend itself and the Syrian
people from Assad's killing machine," Prince Turki told Reuters on the sidelines
of the World Policy Conference in Monaco.
"You
have a situation where one side is lopsided with weapons like the Assad regime
is, with tanks and missiles -- you name it, he is getting it -- and the other
side is screaming out to get defensive weapons against these lethal weapons
that Assad has," Turki said. "Why should he stop the killing?"
"That
to me is why the FSA is in not as prominent position as it should be today,
because of the lack of international support for it. The fighting is going to
continue and the killing is going to continue."
The U.S. gave us the impression that they were going to do
things in Syria that they finally didn't," Prince Turki said outside the
World Policy Conference in Monaco. "The aid they're giving to the Free
Syrian Army is irrelevant. Now they say they're going to stop the aid: OK, stop
it. It's not doing anything anyway."
Saudi
Arabia and Qatar are the main backers of the main opposition Syrian National
Coalition and the FSA.
Assad
is backed by Iran, which struck a preliminary deal on with world powers in
November to limit sanctions relief for more international oversight of its
nuclear program.
Western
countries have held back from giving heavy weapons such as anti-tank and
missile launchers for fear they could fall into the wrong hands.
"For
me ... (to bring a) successful end to this conflict would be to bring an end to
the Assad regime. It is because of the Assad regime that everything is
happening," Prince Turki said.
Commanders
from the Islamic Front are due to hold talks with U.S. officials in Turkey in
coming days, rebel and opposition sources said on Saturday, reflecting the
extent to which the Islamic Front alliance has eclipsed the FSA brigades.
A rebel
fighter with the Islamic Front said he expected the talks to discuss whether
the United States would help arm the front and assign to it responsibility for
maintaining order in the rebel-held areas of northern Syria.
Prince
Turki told Reuters while he hoped Iran was serious with regard its
interim nuclear deal, it needed to provide some confidence-building measures
with its Gulf Arab neighbors, beginning in Syria.
"Iran
is coming at us with a broad smile. Let's hope they are serious about that. We
would like to see Iran first of all get out of Syria," he said.
Reporting
in context for yesterday’s New York Times, Steven Erlanger
wrote in part:
…The Saudis have been particularly
shaken by Mr. Obama’s refusal to intervene forcefully in the Syrian civil war,
especially his recent decision not to punish President Bashar al-Assad of Syria
with military strikes even after evidence emerged that Mr. Assad’s government
used chemical weapons on its own citizens.
Instead, Mr. Obama chose to
seek congressional authorization for a strike, and when that proved difficult
to obtain, he cooperated with Russia to get Syria to agree to give up its
chemical weapons. Prince Turki and Israeli officials have argued that the
agreement merely legitimized Mr. Assad, and on Sunday, the prince called the
world’s failure to stop the conflict in Syria “almost a criminal negligence.”
Syria, Iran, nuclear issues
and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were the main focus for Prince Turki, who
spoke at the World Policy Conference, a gathering of officials and
intellectuals largely drawn from Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.
Saudi unhappiness with
Iran’s growing power in the region is no secret, and the Saudis, who themselves
engage with Iran, have no problem with the United States trying to do the same,
the prince said. But he complained that bilateral talks between Iranian and
American officials had been kept secret from American allies, sowing further
mistrust.
The prince said Iran must
give up its ambitions for a nuclear weapons program — Iran says its nuclear
program is only for civilian purposes — and stop using its own troops and those
of Shiite allies like the Lebanese organization Hezbollah to fight in
neighboring countries, like Syria and Iraq. “The game of hegemony toward
the Arab countries is not acceptable,” the prince said. Just as Arabs will
not dress as Westerners do, he said, “we won’t accept to wear Iranian clothes,
either.”
A prevalent theme at the
conference was the waning of American influence in the Middle East. Laurent
Fabius, the French foreign minister, said: “Today we live in a zero-polar, or
a-polar, world. No one power or group of powers can solve all the problems.”The United States, Mr.
Fabius said, was often criticized for being “overpresent, but now it is being
criticized for not being present enough.” While “it is perfectly
understandable” that Mr. Obama would refrain from new military engagements in
the Middle East, he said, “it creates a certain vacuum” that has allowed Russia
“to make a comeback on the world scene” and has encouraged France to intervene
in the Central African Republic, Libya and Mali…
