Many say the ‘solution’ to the Syria crisis will be decided with the result of the American presidential election. However, this might not be entirely true due to the absence of an ‘acceptable figure’ to take power in Syria after Bashar Al-Assad.
Perhaps the Muslim Brotherhood's election victories in Egypt have triggered America’s reluctance to accept the Syrian branch of the Islamist group and perhaps this is prolonging the nearly 20-month-old uprising.
“The United States will not allow Israel to be between the two wings of the Brotherhood,” Akram Husam, of the Cairo-based National Centre for Middle Eastern Studies, told Al-Ahram Weekly.
Both countries jointly launched the October War of 1973 on Israel, after each lost territory in the 1967 War.
Husam argues that while there was international approval for the Egyptian Brotherhood, this is not the case for the Syrian Brotherhood. Indeed, during her visit to Cairo on 14 July, US Foreign Secretary Hillary Clinton reaffirmed her country’s wish to deal with the Egyptian Brotherhood, whose candidate, Mohamed Morsi, won the presidential election.
“We want to be a good partner [of Egypt] and we want to support the democracy that has been achieved by the courage and sacrifice of the Egyptian people," she said.
Meanwhile, America has made no mention of the Syrian Brotherhood.
“It would make more sense for the US to intervene militarily in Syria so as to have more control over who rules the country and to limit the Brotherhood's influence,” Yezid Sayigh of the Carnegie Middle East Centre in Beirut, told Al-Ahram Weekly.
Sayigh observes that the international community has varied reasons for not intervening in Syria. Most important is the military and financial costs and the fatigue of the US public with foreign wars.
“Syria is simply not seen as important enough for Western powers to get serious about resolving the crisis. The Brotherhood has nowhere near enough influence to persuade the US to intervene militarily,” Sayigh said.
RIDING THE WAVE
The increasing influence of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood on the ground after the start of the uprising on 15 March 2011 led Syrians to debate the possibility of the group taking power.
After 30 years of political and social exclusion, the Brotherhood is gaining influence inside Syria, especially in the northern provinces, including the cities of Homs and Hama, and Idlib on the border with Turkey, hotbeds of the Syrian uprising.
It currently holds a quarter of the 310 seats on the Syrian National Council (SNC), the main opposition umbrella, according to the Carnegie Middle East Centre. Moreover, it has gained control over the SNC's aid division and military bureau, its only important components.
Working secretly, the Brotherhood has been financing the Free Syrian Army and channelling money and supplies to Syria, reviving its social support among farmers and the middle class, according to media reports.
However, many Syrians say the Brotherhood is trying to “ride the people’s revolution.”
“The regime has deleted the Brotherhood from the memories of Syrians,” said Said, 23, who fled from Homs to Cairo last month.
He added that the Brotherhood was “sleeping” and took advantage of the revolution.
Indeed, contrary to the Egyptian Brotherhood, which has a popular base and has long carried out charity work, the Syrian branch was totally banned in Syria.
“The Egyptian Brotherhood has had activities on the street and helped Egyptians to cover the [financial] gap,” Husam said.
HISTORY OF EXCLUSION
The Syrian branch of this pan-Islamic organisation was established by Moustafa Siba'i in 1945, 17 years after it was founded in Egypt. Until the 1963 coup that brought the Ba’ath Party to power, it was a legal opposition party.
Since then it has been banned, with Emergency Law 49 of 1980 mandating the death penalty for membership.
Many members were exiled or killed when the army besieged Hama in 1982, then a Brotherhood stronghold, killing between 10,000 and 40,000 people.
The regime accused the Brotherhood of assassinating prominent officers and public servants in the late seventies and early eighties, including the Aleppo Artillery School massacre in 1979.
“Many Syrians still blame the Brotherhood for the violence of 1976-82,” Sayigh said.
Mindful of international fears of Islamists taking power and the fact that Syria is more ethnically and religiously diverse than Egypt, the organisation published a charter in March pledging to establish a modern, democratic state based on a civil constitution. In addition to guaranteeing human rights and to rejecting terrorism.
This might bear fruit for the Brotherhood because political life has been destroyed in Syria for more than 40 years and many see it as the most organised Syrian political group. People have experienced communism, socialism and secularism – some would like to try political Islam.
“The Brotherhood is popular among the common people in Syria,” Said said. Nevertheless, he said he would not vote for anybody who had been living abroad.
Amin, 28, a lawyer from Aleppo in northern Syria, is more concerned with the programme of each political party: “Whoever comes to power - Christian, Kurdish - I need to see their political plan.”
Some observers say that if the Brotherhood entered politics with a different name, like the Justice and Development Party in Turkey, it would stand a bigger chance of achieving political power in Syria. The Brotherhood is likely to play a role in Syria’s political future but not control the government.
“The Syrian Brotherhood has been absent for over 30 years so it probably has a much smaller voting base,” Sayigh concluded.
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