Case Study Syria 9.12.2020 13:39
Van Dam Introduction
• Greater Syria vs. Bilad al- Sham
o Territory of Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Palestine which
could be viewed as geographically, culturally and
historically united entity
o Today’s Syrian Arab Republic covers an area which is
much smaller than Greater Syria (no longer Lebanon,
Jordan, Palestine and some parts now Turkish Republic)
o Not clear whether British and French drew borders as
such on purpose that not only Great Syria was but also
Mesopotamia between Iraq and Syria was divided (by
Sykes Picot)
o “matter of colonial divide and rule and power politics”
o Iskenderun > Syrians = al-Liva’al Mughtasab (illegally
seized province)
o After more than 70 years of independence, Syrian
national identity has its roots in earlier history.
o Beginning of Syrian Revolution (2011) > “one Syria”
(Alawis, Druzes, Ismailis, Sunnis, Kurds) but took a
different turn.
• Syrian national identity and loyalty towards the Syrian state:
o By the end of French Mandate (1946), wasn’t very
developed. > a nation state and political entity without
being a political community
o During Ottoman Empire > Bilad al- Sham (vilayet of
Damascus – one of the 7 districts in Greater Syria)
o During French mandate, it was ‘truncated’ even more
because it was divided into four states and
administrative entity (Damascus, Aleppo, Alawi, Jabal,
al- Duruz)
• Syrians had a very Arab nationalist view on who is a Syrian
• The Syrian Egyptian Union (1959)
o Number of Ba’athist military officers were transferred
from Syria to Cairo after the union between Egypt and
Syria
o Fulfill the wishes of many Syrians and Egyptians
o Power monopoly by the Egyptian president
,• All union efforts by Arab countries culminated in the
totalitarian leadership of one single Arab leader in Egypt,
Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Algeria, …
o Leaders wanted everything or nothing – mostly ending
up with nothing because they weren’t willing to make
compromises
• Secret Ba’athist Military Committee
o Deciding further steps needed to take over power
within the Syrian organization of the Ba’ath Party itself
by influencing it from behind the scenes
o Steps to take over power in Syria (military coup of 8
March 1963)
o Has a pan Arab structure bur outside of Syria >
traditional civilian leadership
o They helped bring the Qutriyin to prominence
o Highest leadership had 5 Alawis one of them Hafiz al-
Assad
o Implied the ideal of an equalitarian Arab nationalism
that provided minorities the possibility to get rid of their
minority status.
o Ba’ath party also had a socialist component
o Under the French Mandate > divide and rule policy >
maintain order, suppress local rebellions
o Closed community system > during the first half of the
20th century
§ Started to come up again during the war in Syria
(2011)
o Sectarianism > recruiting members from their own
communities
o Strong overlap between sectarian, regional and tribal
identities
o Religion as such did not play as important role as
sectarianism in the sense of social community loyalties.
o Alawis > we’ve been always given an identity defined
by outsiders not by us
o Alawism and Shi’ism are different – Alawism is not the
sub- branch of Shi’ism
,Case Study Syria 9.12.2020 13:39
COULD THE WAR IN SYRIA HAVE BEEN AVOIDED?
• It has been argued that the Syrian Civil War could have been
avoided if the regime of President Bashar al-Assad had
implemented substantial reforms at an early stage of the
Syrian Revolution that broke out in mid-March 2011.
• This revolution started with small-scale and peaceful
demonstrations in Deraa in the south, and later spread out
massively all over Syria.
• in contrast to earlier periods, opposition groups gradually
started to receive support, both political as well as military,
from foreign countries that thereby began to intervene in
Syria’s internal affairs. (proxy, as well as being an internal
intra-Syrian war.)
• If the opposition forces had not been supported in the way
they were, the revolution might possibly have been
suppressed earlier with fewer victims, and the regime might
have continued its repressive rule for another indefinite
period.
• A transformation from Alawi-dominated dictatorship to
democracy in Syria would imply that the existing repressive
institutions were to be dismantled, and that the regime
would have to give up its privileged positions. A scenario in
which the Alawi-dominated power elite were to be
overthrown or removed was bound to be extremely violent.
• there never was a democracy: not under the French
Mandate, not under the Ottoman Turks, neither under the
Omayyad or Abbasid Caliphs or other Islamic rulers, nor
under the Byzantines, Romans or Egyptians, or before.
• The Syrian regime’s excessively repressive behaviour
reflected the motto of ‘it is either al- Asad, or we will burn
the country’
• A reconciliation scenario, South African style, did not seem
to be possible.
• Whereas the common sectarian, regional and family or tribal
backgrounds of the main Ba’thist rulers had been key to the
durability and strength of the regime, their Alawi sectarian
background was also inherently one of its main weaknesses.
, • Shortly before the Syrian Revolution broke out, a wave of
demonstrations and revolts swept over the Arab world,
starting in Tunisia in December 2010, and spreading out
over other Arab countries like Egypt, Libya and Yemen in
early 2011.
• Many of the demonstrators in these countries were
motivated by their miserable economic situations and
lack of future prospects, and they wanted to get rid of
corruption and dictatorship, hoping to achieve more
prosperity and freedom.
• resulted in a serious deterioration of the situations in all
the Arab countries involved. In some cases they even
gave rise to devastating civil wars, such as those
experienced in Libya, Yemen and Syria.
• It should be noted that in the other Arab countries that
had been swept by demonstrations and revolts, the
social composition of the regimes was completely
different from that of the regime in Syria, certainly as
far as the dangerous issue of sectarianism was
concerned. Sectarianism made Syria into a special
case, as has been described in the preceding chapters,
and came to be an important factor during the Syrian
War.
o The sectarian provocation and confrontation that
the Muslim Brotherhood and its Mujahidin had
unsuccessfully initiated at the end of the 1970s
and in the early 1980s, and which ended with the
bloodbath of Hama in 1982, triggered a kind of
self- fulfilling prophecy after the beginning of the
Syrian Revolution, in the sense that something
similar was bound to happen again, albeit in a
somewhat different context.
o Various observers have claimed that the Syrian
regime wanted to encourage a sectarian-tinted
civil war on purpose, and part of the Sunni
majority of the population may indeed have
perceived it as such.
Van Dam Introduction
• Greater Syria vs. Bilad al- Sham
o Territory of Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Palestine which
could be viewed as geographically, culturally and
historically united entity
o Today’s Syrian Arab Republic covers an area which is
much smaller than Greater Syria (no longer Lebanon,
Jordan, Palestine and some parts now Turkish Republic)
o Not clear whether British and French drew borders as
such on purpose that not only Great Syria was but also
Mesopotamia between Iraq and Syria was divided (by
Sykes Picot)
o “matter of colonial divide and rule and power politics”
o Iskenderun > Syrians = al-Liva’al Mughtasab (illegally
seized province)
o After more than 70 years of independence, Syrian
national identity has its roots in earlier history.
o Beginning of Syrian Revolution (2011) > “one Syria”
(Alawis, Druzes, Ismailis, Sunnis, Kurds) but took a
different turn.
• Syrian national identity and loyalty towards the Syrian state:
o By the end of French Mandate (1946), wasn’t very
developed. > a nation state and political entity without
being a political community
o During Ottoman Empire > Bilad al- Sham (vilayet of
Damascus – one of the 7 districts in Greater Syria)
o During French mandate, it was ‘truncated’ even more
because it was divided into four states and
administrative entity (Damascus, Aleppo, Alawi, Jabal,
al- Duruz)
• Syrians had a very Arab nationalist view on who is a Syrian
• The Syrian Egyptian Union (1959)
o Number of Ba’athist military officers were transferred
from Syria to Cairo after the union between Egypt and
Syria
o Fulfill the wishes of many Syrians and Egyptians
o Power monopoly by the Egyptian president
,• All union efforts by Arab countries culminated in the
totalitarian leadership of one single Arab leader in Egypt,
Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Algeria, …
o Leaders wanted everything or nothing – mostly ending
up with nothing because they weren’t willing to make
compromises
• Secret Ba’athist Military Committee
o Deciding further steps needed to take over power
within the Syrian organization of the Ba’ath Party itself
by influencing it from behind the scenes
o Steps to take over power in Syria (military coup of 8
March 1963)
o Has a pan Arab structure bur outside of Syria >
traditional civilian leadership
o They helped bring the Qutriyin to prominence
o Highest leadership had 5 Alawis one of them Hafiz al-
Assad
o Implied the ideal of an equalitarian Arab nationalism
that provided minorities the possibility to get rid of their
minority status.
o Ba’ath party also had a socialist component
o Under the French Mandate > divide and rule policy >
maintain order, suppress local rebellions
o Closed community system > during the first half of the
20th century
§ Started to come up again during the war in Syria
(2011)
o Sectarianism > recruiting members from their own
communities
o Strong overlap between sectarian, regional and tribal
identities
o Religion as such did not play as important role as
sectarianism in the sense of social community loyalties.
o Alawis > we’ve been always given an identity defined
by outsiders not by us
o Alawism and Shi’ism are different – Alawism is not the
sub- branch of Shi’ism
,Case Study Syria 9.12.2020 13:39
COULD THE WAR IN SYRIA HAVE BEEN AVOIDED?
• It has been argued that the Syrian Civil War could have been
avoided if the regime of President Bashar al-Assad had
implemented substantial reforms at an early stage of the
Syrian Revolution that broke out in mid-March 2011.
• This revolution started with small-scale and peaceful
demonstrations in Deraa in the south, and later spread out
massively all over Syria.
• in contrast to earlier periods, opposition groups gradually
started to receive support, both political as well as military,
from foreign countries that thereby began to intervene in
Syria’s internal affairs. (proxy, as well as being an internal
intra-Syrian war.)
• If the opposition forces had not been supported in the way
they were, the revolution might possibly have been
suppressed earlier with fewer victims, and the regime might
have continued its repressive rule for another indefinite
period.
• A transformation from Alawi-dominated dictatorship to
democracy in Syria would imply that the existing repressive
institutions were to be dismantled, and that the regime
would have to give up its privileged positions. A scenario in
which the Alawi-dominated power elite were to be
overthrown or removed was bound to be extremely violent.
• there never was a democracy: not under the French
Mandate, not under the Ottoman Turks, neither under the
Omayyad or Abbasid Caliphs or other Islamic rulers, nor
under the Byzantines, Romans or Egyptians, or before.
• The Syrian regime’s excessively repressive behaviour
reflected the motto of ‘it is either al- Asad, or we will burn
the country’
• A reconciliation scenario, South African style, did not seem
to be possible.
• Whereas the common sectarian, regional and family or tribal
backgrounds of the main Ba’thist rulers had been key to the
durability and strength of the regime, their Alawi sectarian
background was also inherently one of its main weaknesses.
, • Shortly before the Syrian Revolution broke out, a wave of
demonstrations and revolts swept over the Arab world,
starting in Tunisia in December 2010, and spreading out
over other Arab countries like Egypt, Libya and Yemen in
early 2011.
• Many of the demonstrators in these countries were
motivated by their miserable economic situations and
lack of future prospects, and they wanted to get rid of
corruption and dictatorship, hoping to achieve more
prosperity and freedom.
• resulted in a serious deterioration of the situations in all
the Arab countries involved. In some cases they even
gave rise to devastating civil wars, such as those
experienced in Libya, Yemen and Syria.
• It should be noted that in the other Arab countries that
had been swept by demonstrations and revolts, the
social composition of the regimes was completely
different from that of the regime in Syria, certainly as
far as the dangerous issue of sectarianism was
concerned. Sectarianism made Syria into a special
case, as has been described in the preceding chapters,
and came to be an important factor during the Syrian
War.
o The sectarian provocation and confrontation that
the Muslim Brotherhood and its Mujahidin had
unsuccessfully initiated at the end of the 1970s
and in the early 1980s, and which ended with the
bloodbath of Hama in 1982, triggered a kind of
self- fulfilling prophecy after the beginning of the
Syrian Revolution, in the sense that something
similar was bound to happen again, albeit in a
somewhat different context.
o Various observers have claimed that the Syrian
regime wanted to encourage a sectarian-tinted
civil war on purpose, and part of the Sunni
majority of the population may indeed have
perceived it as such.
