Inside Syria: The Backstory of Their Civil War and What the World Can Expect (7 page)

Sultan al-Atrash sought support among all religious and ethnic groups, saying they were all sons of the Arab nation. He sent letters to Christian and Muslim villages, calling for solidarity against the French. The revolt also got support from leftists in France. The Communist Party mailed prorebellion letters to thousands of Syrians and Lebanese using the French postal system.

While the rebels' nationalism was pragmatic, it lacked ideological consistency. As historian Michael Provence wrote in
The Great Syrian Revolt and the Rise of Arab Nationalism
, “They focused on expelling the French from Syria and sometimes mixed in popular Islamic religion, anti-Christian agitation and…class warfare against urban landlords and notables.”
²¹

The French government claimed the revolt was led by Druze feudal chiefs trying to reinforce reactionary customs. The French, by contrast, were bringing progress through modern infrastructure and French education. They denounced the rebels as backward and anti-Christian.

In fact, the rebels had support far beyond the Druze community. But the revolt became complicated because many Christians did side with the French and were therefore attacked by the rebels. Some Syrians also saw the revolt as benefiting only Druze because they would have a
disproportionate share of power. The ruling authorities played Sunni, Shia, Alawite, and Christian against one another to maintain power. And the fragmented rebels lacked a common plan for the future beyond eliminating French rule.

Interestingly enough, some of the same cities that strongly backed rebels in 1925 did so again in 2011. Maydan, a southern suburb of Damascus, was a hotbed of rebellion in both uprisings. Hama was a conservative, deeply religious city in 1925 when it backed the rebels and strongly supported the rebels again in 2011.

The events of 1925 were well known to the rebels of 2011. “They were both popular rebellions,” said Bisher Allisa, an exiled leader of the Syrian Non Violent Movement. “Assad used the same strategy as the French to manipulate religious groups.”
²²

After initial successes in rural areas and smaller cities, the 1925 rebels faced a massive influx of French troops armed with the most modern weapons at the time: heavy machine guns, artillery, and airplanes. The rebels successfully seized Damascus. But the French mercilessly bombed the city by air, one of the first such attacks on civilians in history.

By the spring of 1927 the rebels were defeated and Atrash fled to Jordan. He returned home in 1937 after being pardoned by the French. He received a massive hero's welcome. Atrash again fought for Syrian independence in 1946, remaining a secular pan-Arabist. Atrash stuck to the slogan developed in the 1920s: “Religion is for God, the fatherland is for all.” He died of a heart attack in 1982 in Syria at the age of ninety.

Atrash remains a national hero today for Syrians. A bronze statue of Atrash and his followers bedecks the central plaza in Majdal Shams in the Golan, which is currently occupied by Israel. But in a reflection of modern-day politics, he remains controversial.

“For the Druze and Syrian nationalists, they see him as a hero who fought with all he could against the French mandate,” said El-Hindy. “The Christians in Lebanon would look at him with a more careful eye. [Because of] his attempt to unify Lebanon and Syria, they would be more hesitant to consider him a hero.”
²³

I asked El-Hindy the age-old question that has vexed Arabs for decades: What if the colonial powers had not arbitrarily drawn lines on maps to create the modern Arab states? Could Arabs have done a better job?

He said that after a few years of preparation, people could have voted on a referendum on self-determination, creating their own nation states. He said Syria and Iraq could have become independent countries using a federal system with far more rights for ethnic and religious minorities.

I asked if that process of self-determination would have created more equitable and secure borders. With a shrug and a smile, he said, “I have no idea.”

We do know, however, that when the colonialists drew arbitrary maps and intensified ethnic/religious tensions, they sowed problems that continue to this day. While various kinds of nationalism dominated the anticolonial struggle, another kind of opposition was brewing in nearby Egypt.

Just a year after the defeat of the Syrian revolt, Hassan al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo in 1928. Banna never visited Syria, but his influence there would be profound. Banna was born in 1906 into a devoutly religious family. His father was a clockmaker and an
imam
(prayer leader), and Banna followed in his footsteps to become a school teacher and an imam. He sported a neat beard and wore the traditional fez. By all accounts Banna was a charismatic leader who eventually developed a loyal following in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world. His ideas would make their way into Syria.

The Muslim Brotherhood combined a populist anti-imperialism with Islamic conservatism. While nationalists such as Atrash focused on the political and economic oppression, Banna put more emphasis on colonialism's cultural and religious impact.

Banna wrote, “Western civilization has invaded us by force and with aggression on the level of science and money, of politics and luxury, of pleasures and negligence, and of various aspects of life that are comfortable, exciting, and seductive.”
²⁴
Banna called on Arabs to reject the sin
and corruption of Western civilization and return to the roots of religion. “Islam is the solution” became the brotherhood's motto.

In those years, the brotherhood sought to create an Islamic state. The new state would be tolerant of other “people of the book,” Christians and Jews. But the Muslim brothers were intolerant of non-Sunni Muslims, including Shias, Alawites, and Sufis.

By the 1930s, some Sunnis in Tripoli, Lebanon, and other parts of the French mandate were drawn to Banna's ideas. But Sunni Muslims were much more likely to support nationalist and leftist ideologies at that time, according to El-Hindy. “They didn't think of Islam as their primary identity. They thought about their national identity and regional identity.”
²⁵
The movements influenced by Banna wouldn't gain a mass base of support for years.

Meanwhile, the imperialists worked assiduously to secure their oil profits. After the French deposed Faisal in Syria, the British installed him as king of the newly created nation of Iraq. The British rigged a plebiscite to legitimize Faisal's rule, but the British military retained real power. In 1927, Iraqi oil fields near Kirkuk began producing oil, continuing the scramble for black gold throughout the region. The imperial powers formed an international oil company, the Iraq Petroleum Company, to pump and market the oil. The ownership was split among British, French, and US oil companies.

World War II put a temporary stop to the anticolonial uprisings in Syria and Lebanon, but not to anticolonialist sentiment. The British and French sought to mobilize Arabs against the Germans once again. Many Egyptians joined the British Army, while Arabs in Lebanon and Syria opposed the Vichy French.

When the Nazis occupied France in 1939, they established the Vichy government supported by the conservative French military. Vichy continued to administer the French colonial empire. Perhaps the most famous Vichy military officer in popular American culture was the character played by Claude Rains in the film
Casablanca
. He was the one shocked to discover gambling at Rick's. At the end of the film,
Humphrey Bogart and Claude Rains plan their escape to the Congo, then under control of the “Free French” loyal to Charles de Gaulle.

Such films helped bolster the popular impression that the pro-American Free French were better than the evil, pro-German Vichy colonialists. The colonized people didn't see much difference, and in the case of Syria and Lebanon, the Free French were worse than the short reign of the Vichy.

In 1941 the British occupied Lebanon and Syria and expelled the Vichy forces. The Free French guaranteed independence for Lebanon and Syria, but their promises would prove as reliable as the British declarations during the Arab revolt of 1915. De Gaulle was a political conservative and a staunch defender of the French empire. Once Nazi Germany was defeated, he planned to reassert French colonial rule in Asia, Africa, and particularly in the oil-rich Middle East.

With the arrival of British troops, the Vichy colonial administrators in the French mandate changed sides and declared their loyalty to de Gaulle while intensifying their repression of the local populations. De Gaulle opposed independence and in 1943 publically refused to allow parliamentary elections in the French mandate.

British officials worried that barring elections would drive Arabs into the hands of Hitler. The British also had postwar aspirations to dominate the entire region. At the time, de Gaulle was living in London and was completely dependent on the British. Under orders from Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the British withdrew de Gaulle's telegraphic links with his Free French operatives around the world. Within a week, de Gaulle relented. Elections were set for the fall of 1943.

De Gaulle and his Free French administration were not prepared for the results. Independent nationalists opposed to French colonialism won the August 1943 elections in Lebanon. The Lebanese parliament immediately amended the constitution to establish Lebanese independence. That assertion of sovereignty infuriated de Gaulle and the other Free French colonialists.
²⁶

On November 11, 1943, the French arrested Lebanese president Bishara al-Khoury and his cabinet. Gendarmes broke into the president's
house, held a pistol to the head of Khoury's son, and demanded the president's surrender. French colonial administrator Jean Helleu immediately announced suspension of the new constitution.
²⁷

Lebanese poured into the streets of Beirut and Tripoli in mass demonstrations, which sometimes turned violent. French troops attacked the protestors with live ammunition, killing and wounding over a hundred. The British realized the destabilizing effect of the Free French crackdown and threatened to impose martial law if President Khoury and cabinet were not released immediately. On November 22, the French reinstated the elected government. Forty thousand people demonstrated joyfully in Beirut.

Meanwhile in Syria, the National Bloc handily won parliamentary elections in 1943 and advocated independence policies similar to the nationalists in Lebanon. Shukri al-Quwatli, a wealthy landowner from Damascus and leader of the National Bloc, tried to negotiate independence with the French, but de Gaulle demanded that he sign a colonial treaty that would maintain de facto French control.

In May 1945, mass demonstrations broke out in Damascus and that city became the center for anticolonial activity for all of Syria. The French launched a vicious air and artillery attack on Damascus, eventually killing over four hundred. Once again, the British intervened to stop the fighting.

The brutality of the attack on Damascus only hardened the determination of the independence forces and led to the capitulation of France. By the end of 1945, France had given up control of Syria. Both Lebanon and Syria were able to join the newly formed United Nations in 1945. France withdrew all its troops from its mandate in 1946.

Syrian and Lebanese independence was a stinging defeat for France. It spelled the beginning of the end of the French empire, presaging later French defeats in Vietnam, Tunisia, and Algeria.

While the Syrian independence movement dealt a serious blow to France, it would not bring stability to the country. The battle for control was just beginning.

The newly independent Syria soon faced a major crisis that would engulf the entire Middle East: the formation of Israel. For years, Syria had strongly opposed the creation of a Zionist state. In 1945 it was one of the founding members of the Arab League, which also included Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Yemen. The league called for expelling Zionists from Palestine, and Syria pushed hard for military action.

In 1948, Britain still maintained colonial rule in Palestine. The United Nations had voted to create Arab and Jewish states in Palestine with Jerusalem under international control. Many Zionist leaders were unhappy with the plan because they wanted more land and opposed creation of a Palestinian-Arab state. Arabs opposed the plan because Zionists would gain control of half of Palestine although they owned only 7 percent of the land. Surrounding Arab countries sent in armed groups to blockade Jerusalem. By May 1948, Jewish military forces launched a full-scale attack on British forces and the Arab armies.

Syria sent troops against the Zionists and encouraged other Arab countries to fight, even knowing that the Zionists were much stronger militarily. Joshua Landis, director of the Center of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oklahoma, wrote:

We now know that early military assessments by the Arab League and individual states of their ability to defeat Zionist forces in the impending conflict were unanimous in warning of the superiority of the Zionist military, which outnumbered the Arab forces at every
stage of the war. Certainly, the Syrian leadership was painfully aware of the weakness of the Syrian army and had little or no faith in the ability of the Arab leaders to cooperate effectively against the Jews or win the war in Palestine.
¹

Within two to three months of fighting, the superior Zionist militias had turned the tide on the Arabs, and the war formally ended in March 1949. The Zionists drove out the British, defeated the Arab armies, and expelled large numbers of Palestinian civilians. It was a humiliating defeat for Syria and all the Arab countries involved. The defeat had a devastating impact on Syrian politics and helped precipitate the overthrow of Syrian president Shukri al-Quwatli in a 1949 military coup. Syria agreed to an armistice with Israel but never recognized its legitimacy as a nation state. The conflict continued.

The battle with Zionism and Western imperialism had given rise to intense Arab nationalism throughout the region. In the 1940s a group of middle-class intellectuals came together to form the Syrian Baath Party.
Baath
means “rebirth” in Arabic, and leaders such as Michel Aflaq created a leftist, secular movement within the party that would eventually come to power in both Syria and Iraq. As a youth, Aflaq wore an oversize fez, a sartorial holdover from the Ottoman days. Later he was a handsome man with a pouting look, wearing a double-breasted suit. He was to become one of Syria's best-known political philosophers and leaders.

Born in 1910 in Damascus, Aflaq attended the Sorbonne in Paris from 1929 to 1934. He became an independent Marxist and organized his fellow intellectuals upon his return to Syria. They combined Marxism with pan-Arabism, calling for a single, socialist Arab nation. They opposed both the colonial powers and the
comprador bourgeoisie
, or local Syrian elite.

Aflaq cofounded the Arab Baath Party in 1946. The Baathists later merged with another party to become the Arab Baath Socialist Party. Their new slogan became “Unity, liberty, socialism.”

The Baathists enjoyed electoral success in the early 1950s, becoming
Syria's second-largest party. The Baathists, Communists, and other parties on the left enjoyed widespread support among intellectuals, peasants, workers, and even sections of the military. But that popular support was put to the test by developments in Egypt.

In 1956, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, angering Britain, which had controlled the canal since 1888. Syria and the Arab world sided with Nasser. But Israel, France, and Britain invaded Egypt with the goal of ousting Nasser and returning the canal to British control. The United States pressured all three countries to stop fighting. Nasser stayed in power, and the Suez Canal has remained under Egyptian control.

Nationalist Arab countries concluded that the United States would continue to back Israel, while the Soviet Union did not. So immediately after the Suez War, Syria signed a military agreement with the Soviet Union. The Soviets began shipping planes and tanks to Syria. Their alliance survived the collapse of the Soviet Union and continues with Russia today.

Michel Aflaq and other pan-Arabists then instituted the first and only merger of modern Arab states. In 1958 Egypt and Syria formed one country, the United Arab Republic (UAR). The Baathists assumed they would be the ruling party in the Syrian part of the new country. But Nasser sought to dominate the entire UAR and tried to crush the Baathists.

Baathist military officers in Syria didn't like the power divisions in the UAR; they instigated a coup, and Syria seceded in 1961. Syria maintained subsidized healthcare, education, and other social services adopted under the rubric of Arab socialism. Important industries were nationalized, but workers had few rights and certainly no control of the factories. Syria remained a capitalist country under military domination. The Baathists moved to the Right politically as the military wing of the party expelled the Marxist faction. In 1963 the Baath Party seized power in a military coup. Internal disputes led to another coup in 1966 and yet another in 1970. The military officers who ruled Syria
for the next fifty years maintained the same Baathist rhetoric but few of its early ideals.

By 1967, both Israeli and Arab governments were preparing for war once again. Arab leaders never accepted the existence of Israel, and Israeli leaders were dissatisfied with their country's borders. A military clash was coming, but neither side wanted to be blamed for firing the first shot. Then Nasser closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping. Those thirteen-kilometer-wide straits controlled access to the Red Sea. Egypt also concluded military pacts with Syria, Jordan, and Iraq. The Lyndon Johnson administration suggested sending US and Israeli warships through the Straits of Tiran in order to get the Egyptians to fire first. But US congressional leaders balked at the plan.
²

So, on June 5, Israel launched a massive first strike. It claimed self-defense against an enemy seeking its extinction as a nation. Israel occupied Syria's Golan, arguing that the area gave the Syrian military free rein to fire artillery into Israel. The Israelis also seized the West Bank of the Jordan River from Jordan as well as the Gaza Strip, a thin piece of land along the Mediterranean coast belonging to Egypt. The occupied land held at least one million Palestinians.
³
The war lasted six days and ended in another humiliating Arab defeat.

Officially, Israeli leaders promised to follow UN Resolution 242 by trading occupied territory for recognition of Israel—what they called “land for peace.”
⁴
But successive Israeli governments sent settlers onto Palestinian land, occupied East Jerusalem, and eventually annexed the Golan. Israel never intended to return all the occupied land.

For the United States and Israel, the 1967 war was a swift victory over Arabs intent on wiping out the Jewish state. For one young Syrian living in the Golan, it was just incomprehensible violence. That year, Taleb Ibrahim was four years old, living in the city of Quneitra, not far from the Israeli border. “We had been awakened very early in the morning listening to the airplanes,” he told me. “I saw airplanes at a very low height. I was happy to see airplanes. I said, ‘Look.' My uncle
said, ‘No, they will bomb.' After a while I heard a massive explosion. I couldn't hear anything in my ears.”
⁵

During the 1967 war, Israel captured Quneitra, part of an area Israel said posed a military threat. In 1973 Syria, Egypt, and Israel fought another war in which Syria recaptured some of the Golan, including Quneitra. I drove through the rubble of Quneitra in 2006. It looked much as it did after the last war because the Syrian government never rebuilt the city. The roofs were intact, but the structures had collapsed. The hospital and churches were ransacked. Mohammad Ali, a Syrian government spokesperson, admitted that some of the city was damaged by military battles. But he told me Israeli soldiers intentionally destroyed much of the city before their withdrawal.

“Concrete buildings were destroyed by bulldozers,” he said. “The bulldozer pushes or pulls a corner of the building. So the roofs collapse down. We made a complaint to the UN. An investigation committee came here. This committee found that the destruction was systematic and intentional.”
⁶

The Israeli officials have an official explanation. They said Quneitra was destroyed in fighting between the two sides and deny any intentional destruction.
⁷
However, an official UN report contradicts those assertions.
⁸
It also states that the Syrian government prohibited families from returning to rebuild Quneitra, keeping it as a historical showcase. Ever since 1967, Syria steadfastly demanded the return of all of the Golan. For all its bellicose rhetoric, however, Syria maintained a secure border with Israel, which no soldier or insurgent crossed until the 2011 uprising.

During my interview, Taleb Ibrahim, who is now fifty, admitted that the Arab-Israeli conflict had gone on for too many years. Military actions by both sides had not solved the problem. “Let us reject violence from all sides,” he told me, saying the dispute must be solved politically, not militarily. “Israelis, do you want to be recognized and be safe? OK. Arab: You want to coexist with Israel without any power dominance? Let us try to achieve this. Without this it's impossible to
reach a peace.” Unfortunately, Syria and Israel remained far apart on that all-important political settlement.

Syria's military defeat in 1967 shook the country's Baathist leadership. Air force general Hafez al-Assad overthrew the civilian Baathist dictator Salah Jadid in 1970. No one knew it at the time, but Assad would bring a long period of relative stability to coup-prone Syria using an astute combination of political deal making and harsh repression.

Hafez al-Assad was tall with a hawklike face, an angular nose, and a neatly clipped mustache. He lacked the polite manners of his university-educated son, Bashar, but he was a street-smart politician and military ruler. Born in 1930, Assad grew up in a poor Alawite family. Following the tradition of ambitious Alawite youth going back to French colonial days, Assad attended a military academy. He spent three years at the Homs academy beginning in 1952, where he became a student activist in the Baath Party. Assad eventually rose to the rank of air force general and, after the 1966 Baathist coup, was appointed defense minister. Assad firmly believed in pan-Arabism, which called for the unification of the Arab world. But in practice, Syria and his own career came first. He stayed in power as president until his death in 2000.

US senator James Abourezk, who represented South Dakota from 1974 to 1980, met Assad many times starting in 1973. “I found him to be extremely intelligent, to the extent that various governments beat a path to his door during the many efforts to make peace between Israel and the Arab countries,” Abourezk told me.
⁹

Assad also had tremendous endurance. “American diplomats once told me that meeting with Assad was called bladder diplomacy. Assad could sit and discuss issues for eight or nine hours without any physical discomfort, while at the same time, the American diplomats sat, squirming in their chairs, fearful of getting up to go to the bathroom.”

Political scientist Elie El-Hindy said Assad's long rule reflected his ability to play religious and ethnic groups against one another. “Hafez al-Assad had a very special character, a special charisma, and a special intelligence that enabled him to control Syria,” El-Hindy told me.
“Some people said we're better off in Syria with a dictator than with internal conflicts or Israeli occupation.” El-Hindy noted that Assad convinced religious minorities that he was their protector against the Sunni majority. “Assad was clever to play on the divergence in society and make people scared of each other.”
¹⁰

Assad also played a clever Cold War chess match with the United States and the Soviet Union. For years, he continued Syria's alliance with the Soviets. As the Soviet Union headed toward implosion in 1990, Assad switched sides and briefly allied himself with the United States. Syria joined in the invasion of Iraq during the US-led Gulf War in 1991. The United States, Soviet Union, and Israel were willing to temporarily cooperate with Syria in this era. “It was much easier for the two superpowers and Israel to have one person in control,” explained El-Hindy. “That is what facilitated military guys getting control of most Arab countries.”

Some Arab nationalists in that era believed that the military generals ruling Syria, Iraq, Libya, and other countries in the region were more steadfast in the Arab cause. El-Hindy said history proved them wrong. “The myth that these military guys were going to be better than kings and presidents in fighting against Israel and creating Arab nationalism quickly faded. Arab military leaders were as big a failure as any other leader during that time.” That myth becomes clear when looking at Syria's relations with the Palestinians.