Islamic State: Happy to See Asad Lose, Unhappy His Opponents Are Winning
In the 472nd edition of Al-Naba, the Islamic State’s (IS) weekly newsletter, published on 5 December, the main editorial gives IS’s view of the dramatic events in Syria over the past ten days.
TEN DAYS IN SYRIA
To recap: on 27 November, an insurgent offensive began, planned and led by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a jihadist group that originated in 2011 as a covert branch of IS, became an overt branch of Al-Qaeda in 2013, and publicly removed itself from Al-Qaeda’s command structure in 2016.
The timing of the offensive—on the day that Hizballah, the Lebanon-based branch of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), agreed to a ceasefire with Israel after a months-long mauling—was probably not coincidental. The key factor in this present phase of Syria’s war is the devastation Israel has inflicted on Hizballah and the broader IRGC Network, crippling the key force that has sustained the Bashar al-Asad regime since 2012. While Iran probably could not mobilise sufficient IRGC assets to save Asad at this point, unlike last time Israel is not even letting Tehran try.
Russia’s intervention on Asad’s side was always more of a political and public relations gambit than a military one. Since Vladimir Putin got Russia bogged down in Europe by attempting to eliminate Ukraine in 2022, Moscow has barely been able to maintain the façade of a mission in the Levant. The Russian presence in Syria was parasitic on the Iranian infrastructure, and as that infrastructure has given way the Russians have folded without a fight. Russia may yet lose the bases on the Syrian coast that are key to its Imperial ventures in Africa and elsewhere.
The Asad regime was, therefore, standing virtually alone when HTS initiated the offensive. HTS intended to clear out the regime’s artillery positions in the western Aleppo countryside that had been used to attack the insurgent-held Idlib zone, and to create a “stand-off threat to Aleppo city”—hence the “Deterring Aggression” name of the operation. Turkey initially blocked HTS’s plans in mid-October, as Turkish ruler Recep Tayyip Erdogan was trying to normalise relations with Asad. When Asad dragged his feet, Ankara green-lit the HTS offensive, hoping to gain some leverage in the talks by tilting the balance in northern Syria and threatening worse if Asad did not come to terms. But, while everyone knew the militiafied Asad regime was frail, not even HTS knew the regime was this catastrophically corroded. Upon impact with the insurgency, the Asad system crumbled.
Moving out from its base in Idlib, the HTS-led insurgency captured Aleppo city on 29 November and Hama on 5 December, before pressing south to Homs. Yesterday, 6 December, the “reconciled” rebels of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) kind in Deraa, in southern Syria where the uprising began in 2011, captured the provincial capital. Alongside that, the “Syrian Democratic Forces” (SDF)—the front for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)—which already holds Raqqa city, pushed Asad out of the provincial capital in what had been the shared eastern province of Deir Ezzor, and removed the regime’s positions in Hasaka city and Qamishli in the north-east. And the already-virtually-self-governing Druze population in Suwayda in the south-east shrugged off the veneer of Asadist oversight. This morning, regime forces gave up Qunaytra on the border with Israel.
Thus, Asad was left by this afternoon with nominal control of four provinces: Latakia and Tartus, the heartlands of the Alawi community from which Asad hails, plus Homs, and Damascus.1 Fighting is ongoing in Homs, and insurgents have broken into Damascus, getting to within sight of the presidential palace. The situation is very murky and fluid, but the regime’s troops have yet to show any signs of rallying; even in the capital, they continue to just melt away.
[UPDATE: Homs fell as I was writing this and hours later it was confirmed Asad had fled the capital. The signal from Asad’s plane disappeared and it is unclear if he is alive. HTS took over Damascus; there was even a hand-over ceremony for the transfer of power.]
ISLAMIC STATE’S VIEW
The Naba 472 editorial, entitled, “Free Syria and Asad’s Syria!” (Suriya al-Hura wa-Suriya al-Asad), begins:
Suppose that the Nusayri [Alawi] regime falls now, what system of government would the “Free Syria” factions implement? If you say the shari’a, you do not know the revolution [thawra]! Or you don’t know the shari’a! If you said a “transitional council” and a “national constitution”, then what was the issue of the “revolutionaries”? With the Asad family?!
IS argues that the “recent escalation by the Sahwat” or “Awakening”, as it has always called the Syrian opposition, playing off the name of the anti-IS Sunni insurgents in Iraq who sided with the Americans during the Surge, “cannot be understood in isolation from its temporal context after the ‘Lebanon Agreement’ [i.e., Israel-Hizballah ceasefire] and the international desire it generated to remove Iran from the Syrian scene, as well as the faltering political dialogue between Asad and Ataturghan”, meaning Erdogan—it combines his name with that of the founder of the secular Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. It was the trouble in the talks between Asad and Turkey that “prompted the latter to address Asad and his allies [from] behind the veil of the factions and … through the muzzles of their hired guns”.
America leads the “international coalition”, Al-Naba notes, and Turkey is one of its “main pawns”. The Turks, in turn, rely on smaller pawns, Al-Naba goes on, as do other international and regional actors, all of whose pawns present themselves as “liberators” in Syria. This is what is happening in Syria now, IS insists: “It is a proxy war between the ‘Turkish pawns’, some of which Turkey controls [i.e., the so-called Syrian National Army (SNA)] and others it turns a blind eye to [i.e., HTS], and the ‘Iranian [militias]’ to secure better terms at the table in Astana or Doha or any other table that draws the map of ‘the future Syria’.”
IS says that it warned long ago what “future” or “free” Syria these “Awakening” groups seek, and “today its jahiliya [pre-Islamic, ignorant] nature is plain in the statements of the apostate organisations”, which speak in a language of reassurance to the international system “and ‘coexistence’ with the ‘minorities’ of paganism [wathania] and esotericism [batiniya], such as the Alawis, Ismailis, and Yazidis! Not to mention the Christians.” Worse, says IS, the insurgents “addressed Crusader Russia” as a potential partner in building a “free Syria” and spoke to the “Rafidis” (derogatory term for Shi’is) in the Iraqi government “in the language of ‘understanding and fraternal cooperation’!”
This is “a jahiliya revolution”, IS declares, which wants a “Civil State” of the kind they fought IS for in the past, “not a jihad for the sake of God”. The goal of the insurgents is to replace “an ‘oppressive regime [lit. ‘system’, nizam]’ that monopolises power” with a ‘democratic’ regime that shares power”. Such are the concepts that would animate a “‘Free Syria!’ after the end of ‘Asad’s Syria!’ It consists of toppling an ugly statue and building another with a pretty face on its ruins!”
The proper Islamic view is to condemn both sides of this “National-Nusayri” fight, just as it was with the “Jewish-Rafidi” (Israeli-Iranian) conflict, IS maintains. The “overwhelming joy among the mass of ordinary Muslims” at the crumbling grip of the Asad regime is natural and understandable, Al-Naba says, however, the displacement of “the Nusayris” with “the grip of secular Turkey and its nationalist factions is not emancipation from the cocoon of jahiliya, but rather a transition to another era of jahiliya”.
In short, IS contends that this entire episode in Syria is a result of outside States playing within the “international system”, and this is axiomatically contrary to authentic Islam. In a surprising turn, Al-Naba says this proves IS was right all along. When IS was on the march during the “caliphate” days, there was a rapid effort to put together “the largest jahili-Crusader alliance in history” to thwart it. The opposition of all these forces disproves the conspiracy theories that IS was “created by America, the Jews, Iran, Russia, and all the world’s intelligence services”, Al-Naba notes, and while IS’s project cannot be compared with the very different nationalist projects of the “Awakening” (and their regional backers), “we remind you that the armies of the caliphate in the deserts and rural areas [of Syria] never stopped fighting the Nusayri regime”, implicitly a criticism of the insurgents, who stopped offensive operations for four years before last week.
IS gives vent to its antisemitism, claiming that the actions of the Syrian insurgents are “compatible with the interests of the American-Jewish alliance”, whereas what triggered the major air campaign against IS in 2014 was that it threatened Erbil (the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan) and Kobani (a Kurdish town in northern Syria held by the PKK), “the Jews’ backyard”.
Al-Naba segues to reiterating that even after “Al-Rum” (“Rome” or “the Romans”, i.e. America) combined with “the Persians” to prevent IS making Baghdad the seat of its caliphate, it was still “accused of being agents for all the poles of the Earth!” Those were “years of deception in which the traitor was trusted and the trustworthy person was betrayed”. An unwary reader might think this displays some sensitivity about the enduring accusations that IS works for anyone other than IS, but Al-Naba dispels this: IS “has never sought a reward or thanks from anyone for its jihad”, seeking only the glory of God.
Al-Naba concludes with a rousing defence of IS’s record, its epic battles and its unceasing war against unbelievers, never mortgaging its decision-making for the sake of sponsorship, following at all times the “the orders of God Almighty and [fighting] to achieve the interests of the Muslims”—while others were surrendering to “the conventions of the United Nations and its infidel laws”. This brought hardships to IS as it united everyone against it and made IS less capable of waging its jihad in the short-term, but it is only with the correct methodology and faith that Muslims will succeed in the end, and those in Syria will learn that this is a difference that cannot be split.
FINAL NOTE
In the run-up to IS’s caliphate declaration in 2014, it began an ideological assault on Al-Qaeda for its strategic shift away from a top-down elitist vanguardism towards a “populist” effort to build bottom-up local support that would root the jihadists deeply in communities. IS accused Al-Qaeda of compromising in its implementation of pure Islam for the sake of popularity. In the end, Al-Qaeda leaned into this criticism, defining itself against IS as a more “moderate”, realistic organisation that focused on meeting the needs of the populations it ruled over, avoiding the rejection IS experienced in parts of Iraq in the 2000s, and set aside the global terrorism mission, thereby avoiding provoking international coalitions such as that which destroyed the caliphate.
HTS, though formally separated from Al-Qaeda, has perfected the model in Syria, and IS is once again essentially collaborating in the rebrand. Unmentioned HTS might be by Al-Naba, the editorial is clearly casting HTS as among the groups that rejects jihadist-style shari’a governance, and embraces nationalism, coexistence with the minorities, even democracy, as part of a program that does not threaten neighbouring States, American interests, or the international system. This has been the main theme of HTS’s vigorous messaging campaign over the last ten days.
NOTES
Technically, Asad holds five provinces as Damascus city and the surrounding countryside (Rif Dimashq) are administratively two separate provinces.
Thanks for the introduction: I had forgotten who was who in Syria.
Who knows what happens next.