Ilyas Mosa
Ilyas Mosa (Arabic: إلياس موسى إبراهيم مارقوس; b. 26 October 1966 in Jericho, Palestine), also known by his Kunya Abu Amal (أبو أمل ʾabū ʾamal), is an Arab politician and intelligence officer, who has served since April 2014 as Chairman of the Joint Security Committee, the primary state security and intelligence apparatus of the Arab Union. Mosa holds the rank of brigadier general, and also served from 2007 to 2016 as Deputy Secretary of the National Command of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, the second seniormost position in the hierarchy of the Ba'ath Party.
Biography[edit | edit source]
Early life[edit | edit source]
Ilyas Mosa Ibrahim Marqous was born on Wednesday, 26 October 1966, the youngest of five children and only son of Mosa Ibrahim Adnan Marqous and Amal Nael Ahsan Jarrar, in Jericho, Palestine. For the first eight years of Ilyas' life, his family lived in a modest two-story house a few blocks from central Jericho on the northwest corner of Gamal Abdel Nasser and Saad Seyel Streets. In 1966, Jericho was part of the territories subject to the 1948–1973 Zionist occupation of Palestine. During Ilyas' early childhood in Jericho, the population, while religiously diverse, was overwhelmingly Arabic-speaking, with local Arab authorities administering the town and daily life carrying on for the most part normally. Ilyas attended an English immersion school, in which all subjects were taught in English so the students could learn what was then regarded as the language of trade and the future. His parents, who were both linguists by profession, also taught their children French at home and frequently alternated between Arabic and French in order to keep up their children's abilities. Also, being under military occupation, the local police were Hebrew-speaking Zionist military police. Due to this early experience, as well as already being fluent in English and French, Ilyas picked up Hebrew with relative ease, which he is still able to speak today.
The Arab Revolution had been going on sporadically since 1958, and by 1966, Egypt, Iraq and Syria were united into a single Arab Union, whose Army sought to spread the revolution of unification to the rest of the Arab states, including Palestine. Mosa recalled one of his most vivid childhood memories being that of the Arab Army marching into Jericho in February 1972 and quickly driving the Zionist occupiers out. For nearly two years, Jericho changed hands at seven times, the seventh and final time driving out the Zionists for good. This took place within the wider context of the Palestinian Theatre of the Arab Revolution, known locally as the War of Attrition. In January 1973 thr fighting became so intense the family was forced to relocate to Damascus, Syria, where the revolutionary battles had ended at least half a decade earlier, where they stayed with Amal's sister's family (and the three similar aged maternal cousins of Ilyas and his sisters).
By mid-November 1973 the Arab Army had defeated the Zionist forces on the battlefield, and Palestine became the fourth Arab state to join the Arab Union. However, many Zionist elements, refusing to surrender, found themselves forced underground, and frequent assassinations of political leaders, hostage situations and brazen terrorist attacks all over the Arab Union would terrorise the population for at least another decade.
Adolescence[edit | edit source]
Following Palestine's accession to the Arab Union on 1 January 1974, Mosa was still a boy of seven. The rest of the seventies and the first have of the eighties, and thus most of his childhood, were times of relative peace. The intense postwar political machinations were of no consequence and, frankly, beyond the understanding or concern of a child.
Through the late 1970s and early 80s, however, seeing the successful political unification of the four Arab Union states, with the increase in geopolitical respect, power of self-assertion, and economic integration and thus cooperation, especially the latter example with the seemingly exponential increase in the size of the middle class, decrease in poverty and ultimately standards of living across the board, catalysed a generation in the remaining sixteen "sovereign" or "neo-colonial" (depending on one's view) Arab states to covet similar transformation. And with a so-called "regional branch" of the Arab Union's ruling Ba'ath Party (the very entity which had created the Arab Army, mobilised it to defeat the reactionaries in the original three states and toss out the occupiers in the fourth) in each Arab state, campaigning en masse for a total union, a much larger revolution lingered on the horizon, for which the first resembled simply a dress rehearsal.
War[edit | edit source]
Finally, at 12:00 noon GMT on 1 May 1986, the explosion began. Across virtually all Arab cities of the non-Arab Union states (from Tunis to Beirut, Marrakech to Benghazi, Amman to Riyadh, Dubai to Jeddah, and so on), the streets ground to a halt with millions of demonstrators. But these were not ordinary demonstrators—mixed with the "One People, One Destiny" flag-bearers, megaphone-ampliphied Ba'athist and Pan-Arabist speakers and all colours of agitators, were equal numbers of balaclava-wearing, military uniform-adorned and automatic rifle-brandishing Arab Army soldiers—and it quickly became clear that this had been planned and organised extensively and professionally long beforehand. And while in all sixteen states, the security forces attempted to crack down, this only served to escalate the situation. In many regions, the authorities collapsed virtually immediately, leaving the revolutionaries to.firther entrench themselves and begin to government their enclaves, pledging allegiance to the Arab Union, from which they received further support and managed to hold out indefinitely. One excellent example is Beirut.
In others, however, what remained of the legacy states' military forces—those who had not defected to the revolution—a real war began, with the counterrevolutionary forces mostly digging in surrounding the urban revolutionary centres in the less dense countryside and deserts. Intense siege, aerial and urban warfare would become the norm for these population centres. One horrifying example is Riyadh.
Of course, other theatres of battle took place between the revolutionary and counterrevolutionary forces in the seldom frequented but strategically valuable land permeating most of the territory being vied for. And so, the Second Arab Revolution continued for a painful 3 years and 6 months, finally ending on 5 November 1989, with a revolutionary victory. In total, an estimated 3.34 million people died in the war—about 1.23 million combatants, and 2.11 innocent civilians, at least half of whom were likely children. The borders between the original 20 Arab states remained the same, but they were no longer international borders, but rather sub-national borders between the 20 unique "Arab Republics", which hence existed as the "Union of Arab Republics", or Arab Union for short.
Mosa served in the military operations of the Second Revolution, having been conscripted into the military (and being permitted to choose the Arab Air Force due to his high aptitude scores and several other requirements met) upon turning 18 years of age while the war was just about to reach its sixth month. He also joined the Ba'ath Party in early 1987 while in his second year of service as a reconnaissance pilot in the Air Force's 30th Tactical Wing, indicating he likely believed in the cause he was fighting for.
Back to school[edit | edit source]
Mosa completed his military service in early July 1989, about three months before the war ended. Once peacetime had returned, the following September he enrolled at the Ashraf Atallah Institute in Kazi Zaher, Nasseria, where his previous military and political education were further honed and, in combination with the Institute's broad academic curriculum and practical focus on diplomatic, security and intelligence tradecraft, prepared Mosa for a great deal of where his career would take him. He graduated in June 1993 with a Bachelor of Science, majoring in International Diplomacy.
National Coast Guard[edit | edit source]
After school, Mosa had a desire to spend more time flying before pursuing the profession for which he had studied, and due to his military helicopter flight experience managed to land a job as a civilian helicopter pilot for the National Coast Guard, where he worked from mid-1994 to early 1999. During the early morning hours of 22 January 1999, as a result of a successful yet dangerous attempt to rescue a Beirut-based fishing crew lost nearly 75 km southeast of Cyprus during an unusually severe storm, Mosa and his copilot Youssef Mansour were forced to perform a rough pontoon landing via autorotation due to engine failure; the ordeal resulted in moderate injury to Mosa's left leg, leaving him unable to continue working as a pilot.
Air traffic controller[edit | edit source]
In January 1997, Mosa began working as an air traffic controller at Jaffa Airport, allowing him to continue his career in the aviation profession. By summer 2001, he had become senior manager of ATC operations at the airport, a role in which he continued until early 2003, when he began to take a more active interest in politics. During his six years working in ATC, Mosa had become exponentially more active in politics, educating himself and becoming increasingly active in local- and district-level Ba'ath Party meetings and campaigns during his spare time.
Aerospace Research & Engineering Committee[edit | edit source]
In March 2003, Mosa was recommended by Mohammed Mitri (a senior Palestinian Regional Branch official and former Air Force colleague) for an administrative position at the Palestinian Office of the Ba'ath Party's Aerospace Research and Engineering Committee. He began his new job the following month, quickly rising through the ranks, including by playing a central role in organising successful scientific endeavours toward the development of cutting-edge aircraft stealth technology, which was soon developed into a highly classified prototype stealth fighter by Artema, the leading aerospace developer of the Sinaadef defence industry consortium.
Directorate of Alternative Energy Research[edit | edit source]
By 2006, Mosa had proven himself an effective administrator of sensitive government and political areas, which did not go unnoticed by the Ba'athist élite. In September 2006, he was promoted to Deputy Director of Alternative Energy Research under the Ministry of Energy, entrusting in him a senior rôle in administering the interconnected multitude of theoretical framework, expertise and resources needed for the Arab Union's ongoing, highly clandestine research and development program into the practical application of nuclear fusion power generation. Many of the most groundbreaking breakthroughs were achieved during Mosa's tenure as Deputy Director (2006–2009) and later Director (2009–2012) of Alternative Energy Research.
Joint Security Committee[edit | edit source]
In mid-2012, Mosa was offered the position of Deputy Chairman of the Joint Security Committee, the premier security and intelligence agency of the Arab Union. The recommendation came directly from the Political Bureau of the Ba'ath Party's National Command, likely due to Mosa's specialised military–reconnaissance experience, aviation experience, geopolitical and diplomatic expertise, knowledge of multiple languages, reputation as an effective administrator of especially highly sensitive operations, and perceived political loyalty. Mosa worked under Committee Chairman Boulos Ramadan; following the latter's retirement in 2014, Mosa was promoted to Chairman of the Joint Security Committee, where he has remained ever since.