Syria’s DAESH and the Emir of Peshawar

Balakot after the October 2005 earthquake (top).  Below is a DAESH poster

This is the weekly think piece penned in Arabic by Saudi mass media celebrity Jamal Khashoggi for pan-Arab daily al-Hayat

Balakot is a strange Pakistani town and the gateway to the Kaghan Valley.

The river Kunhar runs through the town, which is still a famous dwindling tourist destination in the region.

Balakot also falls within the Pakistani Taliban region where inhabitants have yet to reconcile with the Pakistani army. When they don’t attack a Pakistani army convoy, they suffice to torch a few pirated video movies in a shop.

The people of Balakot cherish Saudi Arabia, which helped rebuild their town when it was completely destroyed in the massive earthquake of October 8, 2005.

Syed Ahmad Shaheed (1786-1831), a Muslim activist from India against the Sikhs in the Punjab, is buried in the town.

He set up an Islamic state there in the 1830s that British Intelligence described at the time as being “Wahhabi.”

Syed Ahmad Shaheed was influenced by the teachings of Shah Waliullah (1703-1762), an Islamic reformer and founder of modern Islamic thought in India. He was credited with propagating the Madrassa (religious school) of Hadith (account of the Prophet’s deeds and sayings) and Tawhid (oneness of God).

Waliullah arrived in the Hijaz on a pilgrimage in 1724 and stayed there for eight years studying Hadith and Fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence).

In Medina, he became a schoolmate of Sheikh Muhammad bin Abdul Wahhab. The pair studied under Sheikh Muhammad Hayat al-Sindi, a prominent Muslim scholar, chancellor of al-Masjid al-Nabawi and Chief Justice of Medina, who instilled in them the principles of Tawhid (oneness of God), shunning fads, following the Salaf (first generation of Muslims, including the Prophet’s companions) and the establishment of God’s Sharia on earth through Da’wah (preaching of Islam) and Jihad.

Each returned to his country to change the course of history.

Waliullah’s disciples did not only spread the concept of monotheism in Islam, but they turned out to be a thorn in the side of the British for decades by preaching Jihad.

It seems British Intelligence officers in Basra and Bombay compared their respective reports and ended labeling followers of Waliullah and his disciple Syed Ahmad “Wahhabis” because they shared the adherence of their counterparts in the Arabian Peninsula to the purity of Islam and their passion for Jihad.

But great ideas are often trashed by overzealous followers lacking experience and wisdom.

After Syed Ahmad succeeded in turning the Pashtun tribes into Mujahideen, he endeared to them an Islam, which is unadulterated by fads and myths. He had them uphold Sharia instead of Pashtuwali, which the non-written ethical code and traditional lifestyle that the indigenous Pashtun people follow.

At the same time, he set up in that remote part of India an Islamic state after defeating the Sikhs and their army there. He thus entered Peshawar victorious in 1830 amid a warm welcome from its people and tribal elders.

Syed Ahmad did not stay there long.

After spending a few celebratory weeks, he appointed a deputy leader, Mullah Mazhar Ali, and retreated to his mountain stronghold among the Pashtun tribes. Inside two months, Mazhar Ali squandered all what Syed Ahmad achieved over a decade by antagonizing the Peshawar region’s population.

For several months in 1830, Syed Ahmad tried to conciliate established power hierarchies, but before the end of 1830 an organized uprising occurred and his close aides in Peshawar and plain villages were murdered and his Islamic movement retreated to the hills.

Syed Ahmad was killed in Balakot by the Sikh army in 1831.

Thus a genuine liberation and religious reform movement was defeated because of a few follies.

History always repeats itself.

Why this long story?

The reason is none other than the “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant” organization, better known by its Arabic acronym DAESH, and what it is doing to the Syrian revolution now passing through its darkest moments since its outbreak two-and-a-half years ago.

As soon as it joined the fray, DAESH looked down at all the other rebel organizations. It haughtily asked all of them to obey its Emir, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, who insists on remaining incognito and never received a pledge of allegiance in a public place.

Let no one believe that DAESH’s use of the word “state” in the organization’s name or the designation of its leader as “Emir al-Mu’minin” (leader of the faithful) express a whim or a lust for power.

In effect, it is an abbreviation contrived by DAESH to win recognition of its juridical rule. In other words, a “victorious sect” is demanding the loyalty of every Muslim who is aware of its existence and is mindful of the designation of its Emir by its faithful.

Accordingly, the group’s argument goes, the Muslim should pay allegiance or obedience to DAESH or be sentenced to death as an alien breaking away from the congregation.

From Egypt to Syria, it is the season of Fatwas (or legal judgments) concerning Takfir (the practice of one Muslim declaring another an unbeliever) and murder.

While rebel commanders have been forced to accommodate DAESH on the ground, having been starved of cash and weapons, and now that people realize the alternative to DAESH is the Syrian regime, voices criticizing the group are growing louder by the day.

One preacher called DAESH fighters “outsiders” who needed to be eradicated before retractin, saying his words were taken out of context.

The preacher in question can’t be blamed. DAESH’s reach is long and rough. It also has links to hardliners living in our midst who often justify its actions and intimidate its critics.

Time is bound change all that. A few months ago the media was describing Jabhat al-Nusra as a prototype of extremism and an offshoot of al-Qaeda. Politicians were warning against it and the Americans were using it as a scarecrow not to arm the rebels.

Today, Jabhat al-Nusra looks like a guardian angel compared to DAESH.

Jabhat al-Nusa has even consolidated its relations with moderate Islamist rebel groups such as the Tawheed and Ahrar al-Sham brigades, which since their inception opposed suicide operations and the targeting of minorities.

It is only a matter of time before DAESH takes on these moderate Islamist organizations.

DAESH is akin to the Emir of Peshawar, who squandered years of hard work with his follies and Fatwas.

DAESH is the group that will bring nothing but ruin to Syria’s people and neighbors. It will bring nothing but ruin wherever it roosts, including Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, the sub-Saharan desert, Yemen and Somalia.

Could an apolitical religious summit bring together the Islamic nation’s God-fearing scholars to blackball DAESH and its Khawarij (outsiders) and rebuild the true moral code and religious law of Islam?

I doubt!

Obama flees Syria, but what with Saudi Arabia?

File picture of U.S. President Barack Obama and Saudi King Abdullah

By Saudi media star Jamal Khashoggi, writing for al-Hayat

There are many reasons for the Saudi-U.S. crackup.

The breach is mostly over Syria, where U.S. doublespeak has repeatedly been used to hide negativity. Incessant American statements denouncing the Assad regime are totally irreconcilable with happenings on the ground.

What infuriated the Saudis, who want a quick end to the Syria crisis, is what they believe to be America’s laid-back and indifferent attitude liable to prolong the crisis regardless of its consequences and its spillovers into regional countries.

The most conspicuous inconsistency in the American position is in the matter of arming the opposition.

America covertly bumps heads with its Saudi ally over the latter’s desire to raise the quality of arms supplied to the Syrian opposition, and even prevents its Saudi ally from delivering quality weapons by invoking bilateral arms sales agreements banning such transfers to a third party. At the same time, the U.S. does nothing about the shipments of Russian arms to the Syrian regime via Iran and Iraq.

The only time Washington intervened was to back Israel’s objection to Russia delivering game changing S-300 air defense systems to Syria.

The U.S. did not even try to thwart the participation in the Syria war of tens of thousands of Hezbollah and Iraqi Shiite militiamen although Washington has ample details about the role Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard and its Commander General Qasim Suleimani are playing in the war.

Unquestionably, the Americans’ answers – such as they cannot shut out Hezbollah or Iran’s Revolutionary Guard from Syria – are far from having convinced Saudi Arabia.

Riyadh is fully familiar with every aspect of America’s influence in Iraq, which has become the primary conduit for Iranian arm shipments and volunteers to Syria.

Israel did not hesitate to hit Hezbollah and Revolutionary Guard targets inside Syria when she felt they threatened her national security.

It did so without Syria or any of its allies reacting. If Israel can do this, so can America -- especially that Jordan paved the way for Washington, having offered the Obama Administration the chance to use Jordanian bases to deploy its armed drones against Syrian regime targets.

The U.S. Administration declined the Jordanian offer, which was repeated on several occasions in coordination with the Saudis, according to an informed source.

Paradoxically, the U.S. fully concurs with Saudi Arabia that the biggest threat to the security of the Arabian Peninsula comes from al-Qaeda, which is already active in Yemen. Both Washington and Riyadh are working hand-in-hand to fight it.

But at the same time, Washington is indifferent to the threat posed by al-Qaeda in Syria, which mushroomed with the arrival there of the original version of the terrorist group – namely, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which Saudi Arabia perceives as a serious menace to her security. And so do Jordan and Turkey.

By sinking roots in Syria, ISIL, which is also known by its Arabic acronym DAESH, would have set up a network of human ballistic missiles there capable of reaching all regional countries.

It would be in a position to send suicides to all regional cities.

The group has already moved against the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government by sending suicide car-bombers to Erbil in retaliation to KRG President Masoud Barzani’s avowed readiness to help Syria’s Kurds against terrorists in Syria’s north.

The Erbil bombings shocked regional capitals particularly that the enclave was calm for years and has a strong security network.

Experts claim that intercepting a surface-to-surface missile with a network of Patriots is easier than intercepting a lone, cross-border suicide who gets his explosives delivered to him via another route. Once the suicide receives his explosives the chance of foiling his terrorist bombing becomes negligible.

By nesting in northern Syria and welcoming foreign fighters, DAESH will become a magnet for young Saudis outraged by the abuses in Syria.

Such young Saudis have been swayed by calls for Jihad still ringing across the Kingdom, but mostly underground.

Estimates putting the number of Saudi “mujahideen” in Syria at 4,000 are probably inflated, as happened earlier in Afghanistan and Bosnia. But even if the figure were one-fourth of the estimate, the number is substantial enough to reinvigorate al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia after the Kingdom breathed a sigh of relief when its security forces succeeded in stamping out its activities.

Riyadh still has reason for concern. Young Saudis in Syria deliberately conceal their true numbers and shun the media.

They do not emulate al-Qaeda, which is always keen to boost its recruitment campaigns by uploading propaganda videos about the heroism of its members on YouTube.

One expert in Syria who works for the United Nations puts it this way: “You see video clips of Chechens or Libyans much more than of Saudis. But they are by far the more numerous. I believe the Saudis constitute the third largest group of fighters in Syria after the Jordanians and Palestinians. Their shunning the media is worrying.”

This is probably because they know fighting in Syria violates their government’s instructions. They also realize Saudi security is aware as to who left the country to fight in Syria and will surely apprehend the lot on their return.

Al-Qaeda in turn knows this very well and exploits the fact to build a recruitment reservoir for future underground action in the post-Syria stage. Al-Qaeda-watchers know there is always a post-Syria, post-Afghanistan and post-Iraq.

All these Saudi concerns won’t dissipate except with a settlement of the Syria crisis that ends the war that is currently serving as fertile ground for al-Qaeda and Iran to spread their respective influences, each in its own way and in keeping with its own purposes.

 And although neither al-Qaeda nor Iran is a friend of Saudi Arabia, recent leaks in the American press reveal the Obama Administration is not only unconcerned, but wants the Syria crisis to persist.

This is bound to deepen the Saudi American rift.

The hurtful surprise came in a recent New York Times quoting White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough as questioning how much it was in America’s interest to tamp down the violence in Syria.

He argued the status quo in Syria could keep Iran pinned down for years.

In later discussions, McDonough suggested a fight in Syria between Hezbollah and al-Qaeda would work to America’s advantage.

His words evoke memories of “imperialist” statements made in the 1950s when the interests of arms dealers and oil companies determined American foreign policy with total disregard of peoples’ rights and interests.

We are not angels ourselves, but we cannot possibly be as wicked.

The price of such a policy will be paid by the Syrian people and by the whole region. The war between al-Qaeda and Hezbollah will drag in the region’s countries and armies.

U.S. President Obama considers U.S. health care reform more important than what he dubbed Syria’s inferno.

However, for us Saudis, Syria could be our heaven or our inferno.

So let us do something, albeit alone.

No matter what the cost turns out to be today, it would surely be less than what we would have to pay in three of four years.