The Free Syrian Army: An In-Depth Profile of Colonel Riad Al-Asaad
The Free Syrian Army: An In-Depth Profile of Colonel Riad Al-Asaad
Colonel Riad al-Asaad served in the Syrian Air Force since the late 1970s. As of July 2011, he is the commander of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), which currently represents the main dissident military organization opposing Bashar al-Assad’s regime. During his meetings with the media, al-Asaad explained he eventually decided to defect as he felt the regime was targeting him as a dissident, after he had been interrogated by Syrian military intelligence officers in order to find out whether he had been carrying out subversive activities: with the outbreak of the Tunisian revolution, al-Asaad claimed, the Syrian regime became increasingly suspicious towards part of its military officers, who consequently defected to opposition forces (Al Arab, October 08).
Colonel al-Asaad eventually left Syria along with a small group of officers in July 2011, heading for the Turkish city of Hatay, where a refugee camp has been set up. Since his defection, he has assumed a hard-line stance towards the Syrian regime, often comparing al-Assad’s fate with that of other toppled leaders of the Middle East: “I expect a bleak future for President Bashar al-Assad and his aides. Their fate will not be much different than that of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi who had in the past called himself the king of kings and is now hiding from his own people like a rat” (Asharq Al-Awsat, October 07, 2011). He also refused to define the ongoing conflict a ‘civil war’, mainly in order to stress the means disparity between Syrian people and the regime, and the cruelty of the latter: “[This] is not a civil war. It is rather a war by the regime against its own people. It is a gangster’s campaign against the Syrian people. Ironically, the regime perceives the Syrians as slaves. That is why this criminal gang is launching a war against a helpless people” (Middle East Voices, December 02, 2011).
Since he reached Turkey, al-Asaad has been quite active in promoting FSA’s cause and ideals, in order to gain legitimacy in the eyes of both the Syrian population and the international community. He tried to stress the military, rather than political, nature of the FSA, underlining how politics should be a matter for the Syrian National Council (SNC), the opposition front formed in Istanbul in August 2011, and how FSA’s role should be to side with and defend demonstrators from the regime’s attacks. He made this point clear in an interview released in December 2011: “[FSA] supports the Syrian National Council, which represents the Syrian people. We are not seeking a military coup – I assure you we are not. So far, we are not interfering in politics. We rejection factionalism and we do not indulge in politics. The Free Syrian Army was formed on non-partisan, non-political grounds. It is the country’s army, for all Syrians, with just one mission: to protect the homeland and its citizens. The Free Syrian Army is not involved in politics now and won’t be in the future” (Middle East Voices, December 02, 2011). But relations between the SNC and FSA have strained over time. Despite reiterated public reassurances from both sides, Colonel Al-Asaad’s outburst with which he defined SNC members “traitors” has shown how tense relations between different factions are (Reuters, February 17).
Throughout his months at Hatay’s refugee camp, Colonel al-Asaad listed a set of objectives FSA should pursue. Regime change is the main goal, and he is adamant that this must occur through the use of military force. However, at the moment FSA lacks the numbers and equipment to challenge the Syrian Army in a direct confrontation, so al-Asaad has been strongly advocating for the creation of either one or two buffer zones – the main one being along the Turkish-Syrian border, the other one on the border with Jordan. According to him, these buffer zones would be a fundamental turning point in the revolution, as their creation would help new defectors to escape from pro-regime forces and join FSA, giving a strategic advantage to opposition forces: “[The creation of a buffer zone] would help a great deal because it would encourage soldiers and officers who want to defect, but are scared to do so due to a lack of protection. They are forced now to continue with the Assad regime, but once a safety buffer zone is created, a lot of soldiers and officers will be encouraged to defect, which would greatly impact the regime’s army, as it would collapse from within” (Middle East Voices, December 02, 2011). But the international community’s reactions towards al-Asaad’s requests have been cold, and the general approach, as the recent meeting of the ‘Friends of Syria’ group has shown, seems to reflect some degree of skepticism towards how cohesive and united defectors are, and towards SNC leadership potential (Al Arabiya, February 24).
In the past months, al-Asaad did not seem supportive towards the possibility of a foreign military intervention on Syrian soil, and has criticized the way in which observers from the Arab League conducted their monitoring in January, calling for the United Nations Security Council to intervene: “The Arab League and their monitors failed in their mission and though we respect and appreciate our Arab brothers for their efforts, we think they are incapable of improving conditions in Syria or resisting this regime. For that reason we call on them to turn the issue over to the U.N. Security Council and we ask that the international community intervene because they are more capable of protecting Syrians at this stage than our Arab brothers” (Arab News, January 17).
Should the current regime collapse, Colonel al-Asaad plans to proceed with the creation of a new Syrian Army, which should be free from the ethnic and religious cleavages that characterize the actual structure of Syrian armed forces. Currently, defectors are mainly low ranking soldiers and conscripts of Sunni origin, but Al-Asaad expects that those who will join FSA in the next months will come from all backgrounds: “We reject sectarianism, as we have suffered from it under this regime for forty years of injustice and oppression that used a sectarian approach” he stated in an interview. “As for us, we reject such an approach and we are open to all people and allow all factions to join the FSA, with no discrimination whatsoever between Alawites, Druze, Christians and even Kurds” (Middle East Voices, December 02, 2011).
The main question surrounding Colonel al-Asaad’s command is to what extent he is actually in control of the Syrian uprising. So far, many of his statements seemed to be over-confident and unverifiable. According to him, in October 2011 army defectors fighting against al-Assad’s regime numbered around 10,000, but by January 2012 he claimed he could count on roughly 50,000 men, all of them falling under the flag of the Free Syrian Army. [1] As of November 2011, he was claiming he had full control of all forces fighting against the regime in Syria: “There are officers assigned to command different areas, and each one is communicating with his area and coordinating with officers in that area. So we are in complete coordination with each other. Operations are carried out with my knowledge and they are carried out in a systematic, well thought-out strategy against Assad’s forces.”
However, observers could not fail to notice that Syrian fighters openly ignored al-Asaad’s order to implement a ceasefire while Arab League’s monitors were in Syria: the wave of attacks against pro-regime forces raised serious questions about FSA’s actual control over fighters. Al-Asaad’s failure to establish a communication channel with the Arab League while its observers were deployed in Syria also represented a meaningful sign of his limited capabilities and political leverage.
His reiterated claims that some of the attacks are in fact ‘false flag’ operations carried out by Syrian loyalists in order to discredit his name make quite a weak argument – in a video message about the Baath Party headquarters’ attack in Damascus, he referred to an attempt to tarnish the image of the Syrian revolution, while in an interview to Al Jazeera in early January he mentioned the regime’s successful attempt to take advantage of his order to escalate military operations against the regime: “[Bashar al-Assad] blew up the neighborhood of al-Maidan to put the blame on us.” [2] Al-Asaad also had to deny FSA’s involvement in the bombing of governmental buildings occurred in Aleppo in mid-February, after Colonel Aref Hammoud, a fellow member, claimed it was indeed an attack carried out by FSA.
In fact, the first months of 2012 have highlighted how Riad al-Asaad’s leadership is being constantly challenged. Since early February, the arrival of a higher-ranking defector, General Mustafa al-Sheikh, has caused great havoc within FSA, leading some military defectors to suspect his loyalty. After reaching Hatay, al-Sheikh refused to join FSA, and created the “Higher Revolutionary Council”, a military body that openly aims at controlling FSA. The new council managed to recruit sympathizers from FSA’s ranks, such as Major Maher al-Naimi, an FSA spokesperson who has now joined the Higher Revolutionary Council (Hurriyet Daily News, February 08). In an interview, FSA member Colonel Malik Kurdi defined al-Sheikh’s move as “a knife in the back of the revolution.” “We were surprised by this”, he said, “General Sheikh defected and did not join us. He announced this council — it’s his business. We have nothing to do with it. We don’t know anything about it or its aims, but we question its formation at this point. We think it’s an attempt to split the armed opposition” (Al Jadeed, February 07).
SNC is facing internal troubles as well. After Burhan Ghalioun’s re-election in February, the fracture between the secular and the Islamist factions became apparent, especially as the Muslim Brotherhood Alliance backed the candidacy of former judge and human rights activist Haytham Maleh. Criticism towards its leaders has grown, and so has divisions between different blocs.
So far, Riad al-Asaad has failed to prove his military leadership in deeds, making it increasingly hard to trust his self-referred claim that he and FSA are in full command of the Syrian uprising, while it is still to be determined if there actually is a strategy and a clear hierarchy behind FSA, and in FSA/SNC relations. In the evolving constellation of opposition movements, factions, and blocs, al-Asaad seems progressively more isolated, now apparently outranked and threatened by General al-Sheikh, and systematically overlooked by SNC key members and the international community. He probably still retains more credibility than anyone else in the eyes of anti-regime fighters in Syria, but this alone will not be enough in the struggle against Bashar al-Assad.
Notes
1. Interview on Al Jazeera, January 6, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JomeYlvC7Mw.
2. Ibid.
