Syrian ‘counterterrorism’ praised?

A U.S. senator is denying making comments attributed to him by Arabic language newspapers praising Syria’s alleged history of successful domestic counterterrorism.

According to a dispatch by the Middle East Media Research Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based group that interprets Arabic and Farsi news reports, Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., purportedly said the U.S. could “benefit” from Syria’s history of fighting domestic terrorism.

“Syria has a rich experience in fighting terrorism, and it is possible to benefit from it,” Durbin was quoted as saying by the Al-Ba’ath and Al-Hayat newspapers in Syria and London, respectively.

“The analysis we heard on Syria’s history, experience and handling of [the terrorism] that struck at it is a useful lesson for us and for many countries in the world,” the papers quoted Durbin as saying, according to MEMRI’s interpretation.

However, a spokesman for Durbin’s office said Syrian President Assad Bashar, not Durbin, made the comments.

“Sen. Durbin never said that,” Durbin aide Joe Schumaker told WorldNetDaily. “It was a misquote that should have been attributed to Assad.”

The Arabic-language newspapers reported Assad’s Jan. 9 hosting of a U.S. congressional delegation led by Durbin. According to MEMRI, during the visit Assad recounted his nation’s history of “clashes between the … regime and the Muslim Brotherhood between 1982 and 1986, after the Islamic organization perpetrated assassinations and bombings against intellectuals and politicians throughout the country. …”

Besides Durbin, the assistant Democratic Senate floor leader, the delegation included Reps. David Price, D-N.C., Jim Davis, D-Fla., and Adam Schiff, D-Calif. The group also visited Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

The history in question

What Assad was calling domestic terrorism, however, was actually little more than the Damascus government’s violent reaction to political opposition, according to analysts familiar with Syrian history.

Paris-based Syrian journalist Subhi Hadidi, who writes for the London Arabic-language daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi, wrote a historical account of Assad’s example in response to reports that Assad told the story to the visiting American delegation.

“Feb. 2 will mark the 20th anniversary of the massacre that victimized the city of Hamat. Select [Syrian Army] units … under the command of Gen. ‘Ali Haydar, besieged the city for 27 days, bombarding it with heavy artillery and tank [fire] before invading it and killing 30,000 or 40,000 of the city’s citizens … in addition to the 15,000 missing who have not been found to this day, and the 100,000 expelled,” Hadidi wrote.

“Logic would dictate that the Syrian regime, primarily the ‘young’ government of President Bashar Al-Assad, would try as hard as they can to bury this accursed memory, and refrain from talking about it,” he said. “[It would have been expected] of them to try to turn over a new page and eradicate the traces [of the massacre]. After all, this was one of the bloodiest and most violent incidents of the ‘Corrective Movement’ (the term used by Hafez Assad to describe his Ba’athist coup of March 1970). But what really happened?”

According to Hadidi’s account – as interpreted by MEMRI – the Hamat incident was “a genuine, premeditated cold-blooded massacre … not an experience in the fight against terrorism.”

Hadidi said Bashar’s late father, then-President Hafez Assad, gave his commanders full authority to level entire neighborhoods “including mosques and churches,” in a bid to wipe out political opponents based in Hamat.

“Hamat was the cruelest and most extreme lesson for the entire Syrian street, Islamic and secular alike … and for the unions and intellectual groups. Hamat was the model, the lesson and the rule for future handling of any opposition [in Syria], whether armed or peaceful,” Hadidi wrote.

According to MEMRI’s dispatch, beginning in 1979 influential ruling Ba’ath party members in Syria began calling for a “cleansing” of all political opponents, namely “the Muslim Brotherhood.”

“At the ruling Ba’ath party’s seventh national convention in December 1979, Rif’at Al-Assad, a member of the national leadership and commander of the Ba’ath regime’s ‘Defense Units,’ said that anyone not standing on the side of the [Ba’ath coup] stood in enemy ranks … that is, the Muslim Brotherhood,” Hadidi said. “[Al-Assad] called for a national campaign of ‘cleansing,’ demanding that opposition members be sent to labor and re-education camps in the Syrian desert.”

“Rif’at Al-Assad’s [remarks] preceded the popular protest movement that developed among the opposition parties … and the doctors’, dentists’, engineers’, pharmacists’ and lawyers’ unions, all of which declared a one-day strike (March 31, 1980) to protest against the Syrian regime’s lack of freedoms, the cruelty of its repression apparatus and its violation of human rights,” he wrote.

“The regime’s immediate response was to disband these unions and arrest their most prominent leaders,” said Hadidi. “A few months later, the regime launched a wide-scale offensive against some opposition parties, first and foremost the Syrian Communist Party, and between March and May of 1980, the regime perpetrated a series of massacres, one after the other. …”

By Hadidi’s account, Hafez Assad’s solution to alleged terrorism was “state counterterrorism, in larger and more violent measures.”

This violence was the bloodiest of all personal terrorism,” he said. “It was based on assassinations, on openly and directly repressing all opposition protest … on militarizing the state at all echelons and on eliminating politics by means of persecution, arrests and firings. …”

Others in Durbin’s party back his denial.

Bridget Lowell, a spokesman for Price, said her boss “sat in on the entire briefing” Assad gave to the visiting U.S. delegation. “Sen. Durbin never said those things,” she told WorldNetDaily.

Caron Spector, a spokeswoman for Schiff, also said Durbin did not make the remarks attributed to him. Davis’ office, meanwhile, did not return repeated phone calls seeking clarification.

Syria has long been listed by the U.S. State Department as a “sponsor of terrorism.” Though there is no recent record of recent terror attacks against Americans in Syria, “a number of terrorist groups present in Syria oppose U.S. policies in the Middle East,” the State Department said.