Analysis based on facts and common sense - Take off the mask and you
discover an ugly face
The complexities of the Arab Spring and the struggle for
political freedom throughout the Arab world should not obscure what has now become
an absolutely essential understanding for all anti-imperialists: the Muslim
Brotherhood is one of the most powerful weapons of the Western ruling class in
the Muslim world. While that may be a difficult pill for some to swallow for
emotional or psychological reasons, one need look no further than the insidious
role the organization is playing in Syria and the abuses of power and human
rights of the government of Egypt. In the US-NATO sponsored war against the
Assad government, the Muslim Brotherhood has emerged as the leading
western-sanctioned force, the avant-garde of the imperialist assault. While, in
Egypt, President Morsi and the Brotherhood government seek to destroy what had
been, little more than a year ago, the promise of the revolution.
Muslim Brotherhood in Syria
This week’s establishment of the Supreme Military Command,
in charge of all military aid and coordination to the rebels, demonstrates
unequivocally the leadership role of the Muslim Brotherhood in the drive for
regime change in Syria. As Reuters reported, “The unified command includes many with
ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and to Salafists…it excludes the most senior officers
who have defected from Assad’s military.”i This command structure, formed
at the behest and under the sponsorship of the US, UK, France, Saudi Arabia,
Qatar and Turkey among others, does not simply include members of the Muslim
Brotherhood, it is, in fact, dominated by them. Is it possible that the Western
imperial powers simply did not notice that the group they were forming was
comprised of these elements? To suggest so would be to accuse some of the
leading “statesmen” of the world (Hillary Clinton, William Hague, Laurent
Fabius, Ahmet Davutoglu, etc.) of being stupid. Alas, they are not so. Instead,
these individuals have collaborated to create a Muslim Brotherhood proxy force
in Syria, one that can be controlled and depended on to do the bidding of the
West.
However, it is not enough to say that the Muslim Brotherhood
is heading this new military structure, for that would be to imply that they
have not been playing a critical role all along. Rather, the organization has
been central to the destabilization of Syria since the beginning of the armed
conflict. The Syrian National Council, originally the face of the
Western-backed “opposition” was itself dominated behind the scenes by the
Muslim Brotherhood. As former Muslim Brotherhood leader
Ali Sadreddine stated regarding the SNC, “We chose this face,
accepted by the West…We nominated [former SNC head Burhan] Ghalioun as a front
for national action. We are not moving now as the Brotherhood but as part of a
front that includes all currents.”iiEssentially then we see that the
organization has, from the very beginning, maintained a large degree of control
of the foreign-based opposition, as distinctly different from the indigenous
opposition of the National Coordinating Councils and other groups. The Muslim
Brotherhood, an international political and paramilitary machine, has come to
lead the battle against Assad.
In fact, the Muslim Brotherhood has provided many forms of
leadership and assistance to the foreign-based, foreign-backed opposition
beyond simply direct leadership. From providing diplomatic and political cover,
to on-the-ground tactical support such as weapons smuggling, fighter
recruitment, and other necessary responsibilities, the organization has come to
permeate every aspect of what we in the West conveniently refer to as the
“rebels”.
As early as May 2012, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the
center of the organization, was already providing the political and diplomatic
support the rebels needed to topple the Assad regime. As they were poised to
win the Egyptian elections, the Brotherhood was busy making public comments
about the need for Western military intervention in Syria. The organization’s spokesman,
Mahmoud Ghozlan stated, “The Muslim Brotherhood calls on Arab,
Islamic, and international governments to intervene…to bring down the [Assad]
regime.”iii This brazen public statement flies in the face of
all arguments which claim that the Muslim Brotherhood is somehow
anti-imperialist, that they stand in opposition to Western dominance of the
Arab world. On the contrary, though they may posture themselves as opposing the
West, they are, in fact, tools of the imperial powers used to destroy
independent nations which stand in opposition to US hegemony in the Middle
East.
This political and diplomatic backing is merely one aspect
of the Brotherhood’s involvement in the destruction of Syria. As the New York Times reported in
June of 2012, “CIA officers are operating secretly in Southern Turkey helping
allies decide which Syrian opposition fighters across the border will receive
arms…by way of a shadowy network of intermediaries including Syria’s Muslim
Brotherhood.”iv The use of the Muslim Brotherhood to smuggle
arms to the rebels in Syria should come as no surprise considering the fact
that it is the Sunni monarchies of the region (Saudi Arabia and Qatar
primarily) who have been the most vociferous voices championing regime change
in Syria by any means necessary. The relationship between these monarchies and
the Muslim Brotherhood is self-evident: they share similar religious
convictions and are avowed enemies of all forms of Shiism. Moreover, they have
been part and parcel of the system of US hegemony that has kept the entire
region under its vice grip for decades.
Many have argued in the past that, though they share
identical ideologies and “brand”, the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood
is somehow independent of the Muslim Brotherhood proper. This preposterous
claim is countered by the simple fact that every public position the Syrian
Muslim Brotherhood has taken has been in direct alignment with the public
statements from Cairo. As the Carnegie Middle East Center’s article The Muslim
Brotherhood in Syriademonstrates, “Since the beginning of the
revolution, the Brotherhood has maintained that foreign intervention is the
only possible solution to the crisis in Syria. In October 2011, it also called
on Turkey to intervene and establish protected humanitarian zones in Turkish
territory.”vWhen two entities bear the same name, have the same
sponsors, and take the same positions, it is an exercise in willful ignorance
to argue that they are somehow not the same entity or, as is more accurate,
taking orders from the same masters. But who are these masters?
The Powers Behind the Muslim Brotherhood
In examining the utterly insidious role that the Muslim
Brotherhood is playing in Syria, one must begin with an understanding of the
historical relationship between the Muslim Brotherhood and Western imperialism.
The organization was founded by Hassan al-Banna in 1928 with the
intention of reestablishing a purer form of Islam as had existed centuries
before. However, this was merely the religious veneer that was created to mask
the political intentions of the organization. As explained in the Mother Jones article entitled What
is the Muslim Brotherhood and Will It Take Over Egypt?, the author explains
that, “The Muslim Brotherhood served as a battering ram against nationalists
and communists, despite the Brothers’ Islam-based anti-imperialism, the group
often ended up making common cause with the colonial British. It functioned as
an intelligence agency, infiltrating left-wing and nationalist groups.”vi This
indisputable fact, that the Muslim Brotherhood functioned, even its early days,
as a de facto arm of Western intelligence, is critical to understanding its
development and current political power.
However, there are those who argue that, despite this
“coincidence” of objectives and agendas, the Muslim Brotherhood could never be
tied directly to the intelligence community. However, as Robert Dreyfuss,
author of the Mother Jones article clearly points out, there is ample evidence
tying the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood directly to the CIA:
By then [1954], the group’s chief international organizer
and best-known official was Said Ramadan, the
son-in-law of Hassan al-Banna. Ramadan had come to the attention of both the
CIA and MI-6, the British intelligence service. In researching my book…I came
across an unusual photograph that showed Ramadan with President Eisenhower in
the Oval Office. By then, or soon after, Ramadan had likely been recruited as a
CIA agent. Wall Street Journal reporter Ian Johnson has since
documented the close ties between Ramadan and various Western intelligence
services…Johnson writes: ‘By the end of the decade, the CIA was overtly backing
Ramadan.’”vii
The fact that the central figure in the international
organization was a known CIA agent corroborates the assertions made by
countless analysts and investigators that the Brotherhood was used as a weapon
against Nasser and, in fact, all Arab socialist leaders who at that time were
part of a rising tide of Arab nationalism which sought, as its ultimate goal,
independence from Western imperial domination.
In order to fully grasp just how the Brotherhood developed
into the organization we know today, one must understand the relationship
between it and the royal family of Saudi Arabia. In fact, the Saudis have been
the key financiers of the Brotherhood for decades for the same reasons that the
United States and the Western powers needed them: opposition to Arab
nationalism and the growing “insolence” of Shiite states. Dreyfuss writes,
“From its early days, the Brotherhood was financed generously by the Kingdom of
Saudi Arabia, which appreciated its ultra-conservative politics and its
virulent hatred of Arab communists.”viii Essentially, as the
United States began to exert its post-war might throughout the region, the
Muslim Brotherhood was there to be a willing beneficiary and humble servant
sowing the seeds of hatred between Sunni and Shia, espousing a hate-filled
Salafist ideology that preached conflict and inescapable war between the
branches of Islam. Naturally, all to the benefit of Western powers who cared
little for the ideology and more about the money and resources.
A Tool of the Western Powers Today?
It is often argued that, though the historical record
unequivocally shows the Brotherhood as intimately connected to Western
intelligence, somehow the organization has changed, that it has become a
peaceful force for political progress in the Arab world. As recent events in
Egypt have shown, nothing could be further from the truth. With the undemocratic
attempted power grab by Egyptian President Morsi, the scaling back of civil
liberties, the rights of women, and religious and ethnic minorities, the Muslim
Brotherhood has shown itself to be little more than a reactionary political
force parading itself as a form of “progress”.
If one had any doubts as to the true intentions and
motivations of the Muslim Brotherhood once in power in Egypt, one needed look
no further than its position on the institutions of global finance capital,
particularly the International Monetary Fund. In one of the first decisions
taken by Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood government,Cairo established that it would, in
fact, welcome conditional loans from the IMFix to
rescue itself from the prospect of a continued economic crisis. However, as
part of the conditions of the loan, Morsi’s government would have to
drastically reduce subsidies, regulations, and other “market restrictions”
while increasing taxes on the middle class. Essentially, this meant that the
Brotherhood consented to the usual cocktail of austerity medicine that had been
administered by the agents of finance capital so many times all over the world.
This, naturally, begged the question: Was this the end of the revolution?
Indeed, many in the streets of Cairo are asking themselves this same question.
Or, to put it more accurately, they already know the answer.
In Egypt, as in Syria, the Muslim Brotherhood has made
itself into an appendage of the Western imperialist ruling class. It has
dutifully served these interests over the course of decades, though the names,
faces, and propaganda have changed over the years. As we watch the tragic
images coming from Syria or the tens of thousands in the streets of Cairo, we
must question why it has taken so long for this perfidious organization to be
exposed or even understood. The answer is, as usual, because it serves the
interests of global capital to keep the rest of the world confused as to who
the enemies of progress really are. By revealing their true nature, the real
forces of peace and progress around the world can reject the Muslim Brotherhood
and the imperial system in all its overt and covert forms.
Eric
Draitser is the
founder of StopImperialism.com. He is an independent
geopolitical analyst based in New York City. He is a regular contributor to
Russia Today, Press TV, GlobalResearch.ca, and other media outlets. You can
reach him at ericdraitser@gmail.com.
