December 7, 2009
DAMASCUS, Syria — On the morning of December 3, 2009, an explosion occurred to a bus parked at a gas station in the Syrian capital Damascus. According to Syrian officials three people died in the accident, which was due to the explosion of a probably damaged tire while it was being pumped. The Syrian interior minister, Said Sammour immediately ruled out the possibility of a terrorist attack ("There was no terrorism factor behind the bus incident", he said) and he explained that the three dead people were the bus driver plus two gas station workers who were inflating the tire. The minister added on the Syrian TV that the bus was carrying a group of Iranian tourists, but at the moment of the blast the pilgrims were not on-board. Damascus hosts the Sayyida Zeinab Mosque, which is dedicated to the granddaughter of Prophet Muhammad and is one of the most important worship places for the Shiites. In fact, in every season of the year this area of Damascus — around ten kilometers out of the central part of the city — is invaded by Iranian buses transporting thousands of Iranian pilgrims.
Source: AP |
The bus explosion took place while Saeed Jalili, the chief nuclear
negotiator of Iran, was visiting Damascus for meetings with Syrian officials.
Syria is the most important regional partner of Iran and the two countries are
linked by thirty years of good political relations. Immediately after the explosion and
well before the declarations of the interior minister, the common idea was that
what happened was probably the explosion of a bomb.
Photograph: AFP/Getty Images |
The images of the blast showed a bus badly damaged in its rear
part with clear signs of fire. In addition to this, several witnesses suggested
that it was not a tire explosion, but the explosion of a bomb that killed at least
six people and caused some damages to the nearby buildings. One report from
the Al-Manar TV (managed by Hezbollah) claimed that the blast was caused by a gas
canister in a passenger's luggage. Reuters
was told by one of the witnesses that body parts were scattered around the bus.
A member of one of the Western embassies, speaking under condition of
anonymity, had the opportunity to see the damaged bus and explained that
according to him a tire explosion would have never being capable of
damaging so badly the rear part of a bus. So it is quite possible that,
instead of an exploded tire, the accident occurred because of
a rudimentary bomb. What is interesting to point out is that the images broadcast on TV were all related to the body of the bus with no
general view of the areas around.
Sayyidah Zaynab Mosque: Exterior (A. BACCI, 2009) |
After a few days, here in Damascus, no one talks — at least
publicly — anymore of the accident, which in the news it is not mentioned
anymore. In general, Syria is a very safe country with very tight security
controls; a place where bomb
explosions are a rare event. All this said, it's true that in the last years
something started to change for the worse with reference to acts of terrorism — regarding normal criminal actions Syria is still today a very safe country. As the British newspaper The Guardian
says “until recently Syrians were used to seeing such blasts on their
television screens rather than on the streets of their own cities, which they
considered a rare stable point in the Middle East”. In fact, Syria in recent
years started to be hit by bomb attacks. As a simple remainder, in 2008 three
important terrorist attacks happened in Syria. In January, General
Mohammed Suleiman, a high-ranking aide to President Bashar Assad was killed in the city of Tartus, in February happened the assassination
of Imad Mughnyah, a high-ranking military commander with Hezbollah (some said that it had been the Mossad to kill him), while in September a car-bomb attack
on a security complex close to the Damascus airport killed 17 people and
injured 14. The latter attack was attributed to a Sunni Lebanon-based Islamist
group linked to al-Qaeda. In addition to these main events, both the U.S. and
Israel have completed in the last years some raids against targets in the
Syrian territory. For instance, three explosions alongside the Israeli raid on
a suspected nuclear facility in 2007 and the late 2008 U.S. attack on the
eastern border of Iraq.
Sayyidah Zaynab Mosque: Internal Decoration (A. BACCI, 2009) |
All these accidents with no doubt risk derailing the
process of escaping international isolation, a position in which Syria has been confined for the last decades.
Assuming that the bus the explosion was not accidental and was due to a
bomb, it is not easy to identify the possible culprits. In fact, there are at
least four hypotheses, all having a certain degree of probability. They
are:
1) Internal or external Sunni extremists linked or sympathizing
with al-Qaeda. They hate Shiites, they hit in the past and they always try to
create problems to the Syrian government.
2) Israeli Mossad. In this case the Israeli intelligence service
wanted to send a signal to the Syrian authorities. In fact, the explosion
happened in the same moment when in Damascus there was Said Jalili, who is the Iranian chief nuclear negotiator.
3) Palestinian factions separated from the Syrian intelligence
services.
4) A possible fight between different members of the Syrian
security services.
Of these four hypotheses, probably the first one is the most
plausible. The Syrian authorities are really scared by the dangers of Sunni
extremism. The father of Bashar Assad destroyed Sunni extremists in the 1980s.
In particular, on February 2, 1982, the day of the Hama Massacre, the Syrian
Army bombarded the city of Hama, which was at that time a stronghold of the
Muslim Brotherhood, which had started to wage an armed rebellion against
President Hafez al-Hassad. Between 7,000 people to 40,000 people died and large areas
of the old city were destroyed. After
the Hama uprising, the Islamist insurrection was defeated, and since then the
Muslim Brotherhood has operated in exile while other factions surrendered or
slipped into hiding. Now, there are signs that the movement is rising one more
time. At the same time, Shiite power increased in Syria thanks to the Iranian
influence and Hezbollah, although it needs to be underlined that Syria’s Shia
population is very small, i.e., around 13 percent, of whom many are the not very religious
Alawites.
A good possibility is that the bus explosion may be linked still
in relation to hypothesis A, to locally based militants who operate
independently of external militants or powers. This possibility is well
supported by the fact that the explosion was very rudimentary. Syria in
the last years has facilitated the passage into Iraq through its borders
of Sunni combatants desiring to fight in favor of the Iraqi insurgence. These
people going back and forth from Syria to Iraq now strongly criticize two
points: Syria's alliance with Iran (a Shia country) and the rapprochement with
the West that President Bashar Assad is trying to implement. Within hypothesis
A, the involvement of external forces is less credible because Syria has recently obtained positive successes in international politics and has partially escaped
its decades-long international isolationism. Not long ago, Syria has implemented a détente with Saudi Arabia (with which the relation were quite strained
only in 2008) and in addition to this, in Lebanon the newly formed government now
includes pro-Syrian elements. In other words, the possible involvement of
external backers for terrorist attacks in Syria has decreased during the last
year.
All this said, it is true that following the bloodshed events of the last two years, it's understandable the fears that President Assad and the government have in relation to the future Syrian political development. In the short term the Syrian regime may use the explosions of the last two years to bring about two actions. First, Syria could portray itself as a victim of Sunni extremism and, thanks to this stance, it could continue to march through the international political rehabilitation path. Second, it could control, in an even stricter way, its own Syrian population. Instead, the problem may linger in the long term, when it will be completely understood that this tough and harsh way of governing Syria is providing good results with reference to petty crime but no positive results at all in dealing with terrorism. In fact, Syria is becoming more and more like a chessboard where different radical groups risk fighting one another. A good idea could be for President Assad and for the government not to rule by force but to develop a political strategy involving all the different Syrian groups. With no doubt a very daunting challenge.