Children of Muslim Brotherhood Exiles See Hope for Return to Syria

Raafat al-Ghanim

Zahra is 25 years old and has never seen her hometown Aleppo, or any other part of Syria for that matter.

Zahra was born in Baghdad after her family relocated following the Baath regime’s violent purge of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1980’s. When the First Gulf War broke out in 1990, the family moved from Baghdad to Amman.

But even a life in exile could not sever the deep bond between Zahra and her homeland.

“I have never seen Syria, but it lives inside me,” Zahra says from behind her niqab. She speaks in a heavy Allepo accent–her father forbid her to speak anything else from the time she was small.

Many sons and daughters of Brotherhood families raised abroad hope to return should  Bashar al-Assad’s regime fall.

An estimated hundred thousand Syrians left Syria following the violent crackdown of the 1980’s, according to Dr Yassin Ghadban, a senior member of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood. That number has grown as these families expanded over the past thirty years.

It is estimated that the Syrians who moved to Jordan following the crackdown and their family members currently number about one hundred thousand. These families were not granted citizenship, and the Jordanian government declines to release official data due to local sensitivities over the demographic balance, particularly between Jordanians and naturalized Arabs from other countries–namely the Palestinians.

Ahmed, a 21-year-old university student who lives in Amman, did not follow in the political footsteps of his family by joining the Brotherhood, but he still longs to return to his homeland when the regime falls, something he considers an inevitability.

Ahmed is perhaps the exception. Many of these young people, born into exile, have gone on to join the Brotherhood, comprising the new generation. Most of these have engaged in one way or another with the revolution in Syria. While a few have crossed the border and volunteered with the Free Syrian Army, the majority have joined relief organizations that offer help to Syrians in Syria or Jordan and assist opposition media groups inside Syria.

“When the revolution started, I felt as if a window had been opened,” says Zahra, adding that she never imagined something like this could happen. Zahra, who is active in the Brotherhood, was among the first to attend the sit-ins in front of the Syrian embassy when the protests first broke out in 2011. She has also participated in conferences organized by the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, which is based in London. Most recently, she attended the ‘First Conference for Muslim Brotherhood Youth in Syria’ in Istanbul in December, 2012.  The conference was attended by representatives from Hamas and the Tunisian El Nahda movement, as well as the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, and emphasized the important role of young people in the organization.
Hassan, a young man in his late twenties who also belongs to a Brotherhood family, believes it is the only “coherent” political party in Syria because it was able to organize abroad, while the traditional opposition parties were wiped out by the regime.

Hassan Abu Haniya, an expert on Islamist groups, explains that in the beginning, Jordanian authorities allowed the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood exiles to express their view. This changed following the reconciliation between King Hussein and Hafez al-Assad in the mid 1980’s. Since then, members of the Brotherhood have lived in Jordan according to a tacit agreement with the government not to engage in any political activities.

The Brotherhood exiles remained isolated from Jordanian society at large, steering clear of politics, until the outbreak of the uprising in Syria, at which point a rift emerged between the older and new generation, according to Abu Haniya.

The older generation, Abu Haniya says, is more jaded, while “education, the Internet and globalization have all pushed the younger generation to participate in the Syrian revolution and claim their rights as Syrians.”

“This generation has great ambition,” he adds.

Abu Haniya sees a bright future for Syria, while Hassan believes that chaos will engulf Syria after the fall of the regime, which the goal that has united the opposition factions so far.

He has faith, however, in the tolerance and wisdom of the Syrian people, which will put an end to Syria’s problems in the future.

“God gives us hope,” he says.