Syrian rebel leader borrows a page from Khomeini and Erdogan’s playbook

When a strategy works, why change it? In the first 24 hours after taking Damascus, Abu Muhammad Jawlani, the head of the victorious Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, group feigned moderation. He promised Syrians that there would be no retribution to backers of the former regime and said the Turkish-backed group envisioned a Syria where all Syrians, regardless of religion, could live in peace. He did not try to deny his radical past. Jawlani, after all, had a $10 million US State Department bounty on his head due to his support for Al Qaeda. But, after sweeping through Syria and ousting the equally odious Bashar al-Assad, he said he had reformed. Many analysts and journalists believed him, and diplomats breathed a sigh of relief.

No one should be so sanguine, however. The playbook Jawlani uses in Syria has precedent with both Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini during the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran and with Recep Tayyip Erdogan upon his party’s sweep of Turkey’s November 2002 elections.

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On February 1, 1979, shortly after Mohammed Reza Shah fled Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned to a rapturous welcome. Three million Iranians greeted him at Tehran’s airport. Iranians and foreign diplomats criticized the shah for violations of human rights but saw in Khomeini someone who sought a better, more progressive country. Richard Falk, a Princeton University professor influential in the Jimmy Carter administration, urged the White House in a New York Times opinion article to embrace Khomeini.  “The depiction of him as fanatical, reactionary, and the bearer of crude prejudices seems certainly and happily false,” Falk explained, adding, “His close advisers are uniformly composed of moderate, progressive individuals…who share a notable record of concern with human rights.” Khomeini may have been a radical in the 1960s opposed to women’s rights and equality of Muslims and non-Muslims, but talk of Khomeini’s conversion was what Carter wanted to hear. Even as Khomeini launched a reign of terror, the State Department embraced the new government. So too did many in the press.  Steven Erlanger, a young journalist who would eventually become The New York Times’ chief diplomatic correspondent filed a dispatch just a day before the seizure of the U.S. Embassy arguing that while the revolution was not over, “the religious phase is drawing to a close.”

The reason for such confusion about Khomeini and his agenda was his own statements. While exiled in France for the year prior to the Islamic Revolution, he repeatedly told Western journalists and diplomats what they wanted to hear. “Personal desire, age, and my health do not allow me to personally have a role in running the country after the fall of the current system,” he told the Associated Press, on November 7, 1978. Nine days later, he told The Guardian, “I don’t want to have the power or the government in my hand; I am not interested in personal power.” That same day, he told an Austrian television reporter, “I don’t want to be the leader of the Islamic Republic; I don’t want to have the government or the power in my hands. I only guide the people in selecting the system.” He told Reuters, meanwhile, “The foundation of our Islamic government is based on freedom of dialogue and will fight against any kind of censorship.” Later, he promised, “In the Islamic Republic the rights of the religious minorities are respectfully regarded.”

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As soon as Khomeini’s power was secure, however, he took a different tone. “Don’t listen to those who speak of democracy,” he told Iranian students in Qom on March 13, 1979, “They all are against Islam…. We will break all the poison pens of those who speak of nationalism, democracy, and such things.” Five months later, he addressed political dissent, “We have to warn these intellectuals that if they don’t stop their meddling, they will be crushed,” he declared. His militancy grew with his power. Later that month, he addressed the Fayzieah madrasa in Qom. “Those who are trying to bring corruption and destruction to our country in the name of democracy will be oppressed. They are worse than Bani-Ghorizeh Jews, and they must be hanged.” There followed a reign of terror that has yet to end.

The same was true with Erdogan’s rise. Initially, American officials worried about Erdogan’s religious agenda. He was a Muslim Brotherhood acolyte who, while mayor of Istanbul, disparaged secularism. “Thank God Almighty, I am a servant of the Shari’a (Islamic Law),” he declared when he began his mayoralty in 1994. The following year, he described himself as “the imam of Istanbul.” In 1997, Erdogan’s ousted mentor, Necmettin Erbakan became Turkey’s first Islamist prime minister. He immediately began to seek to reorient Turkey’s foreign policy away from the West and toward the Islamic world. It was against this backdrop that Erdogan recited a poem declaring mosques to be his bayonets. After the Turkish military forced Erbakan to resign, they imprisoned Erdogan for religious incitement.

When he returned to political power in November 2002 with a super majority in parliament, Erdogan bent over backwards to allay Western concerns. “We are the guarantors of this (Turkish) secularism,” he assured, “and our management will clearly prove that.” American diplomats affirmed Erdogan’s conversion. Daniel Fried, assistant secretary of state for European Affairs, explained Erdogan’s party was “a kind of Muslim version of a Christian Democratic Party,” that is, not religious at all. Secretary of State Colin Powell praised Erdogan’s “democracy” and, on June 27, 2004, President George W. Bush told journalists in Ankara, “I appreciate so very much the example your country has set on how to be a Muslim country and at the same time a country which embraces democracy and rule of law and freedom.”

Erdogan, like Khomeini, feigned pragmatism to allow him time to consolidate power. Earlier in his career, the Turkish leader had explained, “Democracy is like a streetcar. You ride it until you arrive at your destination and then you step off.” As Western officials calibrated their policy to wishful thinking about his tolerance and commitment to democracy, the murder rate of women inside Turkey increased 1,400 per cent as Islamic conservatives felt they could conduct honor killings with impunity. Erdogan reoriented Turkey’s banking system toward Islamic finance, reached out to Hamas, provided logistical support for the Islamic State, and cracked down on religious minorities. Today, Turkey is a terror sponsor in all but formal designation. It uses its military industries to support radical groups ranging from Somali militants to Pakistan-sponsored Kashmir terrorists.

Back to Syria: While Jawlani preaches moderation to Western journalists, he signals Syrians with a different message. Jawlani declared the end of the Assad regime and the rebel victory not from the presidential palace or parliament, but rather from the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, the site of Islam’s first caliphate. The symbolism was clear. So too were televised calls by Jawlani’s fighters to continue their march to Jerusalem and then Mecca. Meanwhile, Christians flee Syria’s second largest city Aleppo en masse. They know the Syrians behind victorious Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham well, and recognise that they are far less moderate than they claim.

Few will mourn the Assad regime’s demise, but the enemy of an enemy is not necessarily a friend. Jawlani might eschew Al Qaeda ties openly, but his ideological proclivities are clear. As Sunni militants consolidate control, Syria could become an engine for further instability. Israel can defend itself, but Jordan is vulnerable and already primed for rebellion given King Abdullah II’s tin ear to his own population. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist leader behind the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, not only was Jordanian, but he represented more the rule than the exception in poorer quarters of the Kingdom today. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, remains susceptible to Islamist backlash that Syrian militants can stoke, especially as conservative elements and young people left behind resent Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman’s openness to the West and reform.

It is ironic that while Americans and Europeans pride themselves on their enlightened diplomacy, Islamists so often seize advantage from their gullibility. In Syria, Washington, Brussels, and others may now be making the same mistake for the third time.

Michael Rubin is director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.