Case Study Syria.docx

CASE STUDY ON SYRIA’S CONFLICT

I. i.

INTRODUCTION Syria’s Geography

Syria is a small, poor, and crowded country. On the map, it appears about the size of Washington State or Spain, but only about a quarter of its 185,000 square kilometers is arable land. That is, “economic Syria” is about as large as a combination of Maryland and Connecticut or Switzerland. Most is desert—some is suitable for grazing but less than 10 percent of the surface is permanent cropland. Except for a narrow belt along the Mediterranean, the whole country is subject to extreme temperatures that cause frequent dust storms and periodic droughts. Four years of devastating drought from 2006 to 2011 turned Syria into a land like the American “dust bowl” of the 1930s. That drought was said to have been the worst ever recorded, but it was one in a long sequence: Just in the period from 2001 to 2010, Syria had 60 “significant” dust storms. The most important physical aspect of these storms, as was the experience in America in the 1930s, was the removal of the topsoil. Politically, they triggered the civil war. Before the heavy fighting began, Syrian oil fields produced about 330,000 barrels per day, but Syrians consumed all but about 70,000 of that amount. Sales supplied about 20 percent of GDP and a third of export earnings. Production subsequently fell by at least 50 percent, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Syria’s oil is of poor quality, sour, and expensive to refine. Industry, (mainly energy-related) employed about a third of the adult male population and provided a similar percentage of the national income. Before the war, moves were being made to transport oil and gas from farther east across Syria to the Mediterranean; obviously, these projects have been stopped. Now there is a sort of cottage industry in crude refining of petroleum products for local use and smuggling. ii.

Syrian Heritage

Since before history was written, Syria has been fought over by foreign empires— Egyptians, Hittites, Assyrians, Persians, Macedonian Greeks, Romans, Mongols, Turks, British, and French. Only during the Umayyad Caliphate in the 7th and 8th centuries A.D. was it the center of an empire. But that relatively short period left Syria with its Islamic heritage. For many centuries, the society has been overwhelmingly Muslim.

Syria also has historically been a sanctuary for little groups of peoples whose differences from one another were defined in religious and/or ethnic terms. Several of these communities were “leftovers” from previous invasions or migrations. During most of the last five centuries, when what is today Syria was part of the Ottoman Empire, groups of Orthodox, Catholic, and other Christians; Alawis, Ismailis, and other sorts of

Shia Muslims; and Yazidis, Kurds, Jews, and Druze lived in enclaves and in neighborhoods in the various cities and towns alongside Sunni Muslim Arabs. During Ottoman rule the population was organized in two overlapping ways. First, there was no “Syria” in the sense of a nation-state, but rather provinces (Turkish: pashaliqs) that were centered on the ancient cities. The most important of these were Damascus, which may be the oldest permanently settled city in the world today, and Aleppo. The concept of a state, much less a nation-state, did not enter into political thought until the end of the 19th century. Inhabitants of the various parts of what became Syria could move without feeling or being considered alien from one province of the Ottoman Empire to the next. Thus, if the grandfathers or great grandfathers of people alive today were asked about what entity they belonged to, they would probably have named the city or village where they paid their taxes. Second, throughout its centuries of rule, the Ottoman Empire generally was content to have its subjects live by their own codes of behavior. It did not have the means or the incentive to intrude into their daily lives. Muslims, whether Turk or Arab or Kurd, shared the Islamic mores and law with the imperial government. Other ethnic/religious “nations” (Turkish: millet) were self-governing except in military and foreign affairs. iii.

The Assad Regime

It was in answer to the perceived weakness of Syrian statehood and the disorder of Syrian political life that the first Assad regime was established in 1970 by Hafez alAssad, the father of the current leader. The Assad family came from the Alawi (a.k.a. Nusairi) minority, which includes about one in eight Syrians and about a quarter of a million people in both Lebanon and Turkey. Like the Jews, the Alawis consider themselves the “chosen people,” but they are regarded by Orthodox Muslims as heretics. Under Ottoman pluralism, this mattered little, but as Syrians struggled for a sense of identity and came to suspect social difference and to fear the cooperation of minorities with foreigners, being an Alawi or a Christian or a Jew put people under a cloud. So, for Hafez al-Assad, the secular, nationalist Baath Party was a natural choice: it offered, or seemed to offer, the means to overcome his origins in a minority community and to point toward a solution to the disunity of Syrian politics. He therefore embraced it eagerly and eventually became its leader. The “Resurrection” (Arabic: Baath) Party had its origins, like the nationalist-communist Vietnamese movement, in France. Two young Syrians, one a Christian and the other a Sunni Muslim, who were then studying in Paris were both attracted to the grandeur of France and appalled by the weakness of Syria. Like Ho Chi Minh, they wanted to both become like France and get the French out of their nation. Both believed that the future lay in unity and socialism. Their answer was to try to bridge the gaps between rich and poor through a modified version of socialism, and between Muslims and minorities through a modified concept of Islam. Islam, in their view, needed to be considered politically not as a religion but as a manifestation of the Arab nation. Thus, the society they wished to create, they proclaimed, should be modern (with, among other things,

equality for women), secular (with faith relegated to personal affairs), and defined by a culture of “Arabism” overriding the traditional concepts of ethnicity. In short, what they sought was the very antithesis of the objectives of the already-strong and growing Muslim Brotherhood. Like many young men of his generation, Hafez al-Assad first put his hopes in the military, which seemed, more than political parties, even the Baath, to embody the nation. He avidly studied his new profession and became a fighter pilot, but he quickly realized that the military was only a means of action and that what it did had to be guided by political ideas and organization. So, he used his military affiliation to energize his party role. This, inevitably, caught him up in the coups, counter-coups, and sundry conspiracies that engaged Syrian politicians and army officers during the 1950s and 1960s. Emerging from this labyrinth, he skilfully maneuvered himself into the leadership of his party and domination of the political and military structure of the country by 1971. And his assumption of the presidency was certified by a plebiscite in that year. His survival, much less his victory, was nearly a miracle, but he had not managed to solve the fundamental problem of Syrian ethnicity and particularly the role of Islam in society. This problem, which is so tragically and bitterly evident in Syria today, found an early expression in the writing of the new constitution in 1973. The previous constitutions, going back to French colonial times, had specified that a Muslim should hold the presidency. Despite his dedication to secular politics, Hafez al-Assad made two attempts to cater to Muslim opinion. In the first, he got the clause in the former constitutions conditioning the presidential office to a Muslim replaced by a redefinition of Islam of sorts. “Islam,” the new language stressed, “is a religion of love, progress and social justice, of equality for all…” Then, in the second move, he arranged for a respected Islamic jurisconsult (not from Syria but from Lebanon, and not a Sunni but a Shia) to issue a finding (Arabic: fatwa) that Alawis were really Shia Muslims rather than heretics. This was not merely an abstract bit of theology: as heretics, Alawis were outlaws who could be legally and meritoriously killed—as we have seen in recent events in Syria. The Muslim Brotherhood was furious. Riots broke out around the country, particularly in the city of Hama. For some years, Assad managed to contain the discontent—partly by granting subsidies on food and partly by curbing the already-hated political police—but the fundamental issue was not resolved. Muslim Brothers and other disaffected groups organized terrorist attacks on the government and on Assad’s inner circle, killing some of his close collaborators and exploding car bombs at installations, including even the office of the prime minister and the headquarters of the air force. Assad was told that he would soon follow Egypt’s Anwar Sadat, killed by Muslim terrorists, into the grave. As it had been periodically during French colonialism, the whole city of Damascus came under siege. Finally, the Islamic forces were ready to challenge the regime in all-out war. An army unit sent into the Muslim Brotherhood stronghold in the city of Hama was ambushed. The local Muslim guerrilla leader gave the signal for a general uprising.

After Assad’s assault in 1982, the Syrian city of Hama looked like the Iraqi city of Fallujah after the American assault in 2004. Acres of the city were submerged under piles of rubble. But then, like Stalingrad after the German attack or Berlin after the Russian siege, reconstruction began. In a remarkable series of moves, Hafez al-Assad ordered the rubble cleared away, built new highways, constructed new schools and hospitals, opened new parks, and even, in a wholly unexpected conciliatory gesture, erected two huge new mosques. He thus made evident what had been his philosophy of government since he first took power: help the Syrian people to live better provided only that they not challenge his rule. In his thought and actions, his stern and often-brutal monopoly of power, he may be compared to the ruling men, families, parties, and establishments of Chinese, Iranian, Russian, Saudi Arabian, Vietnamese, and numerous other regimes. Already in 1980, Hafez al-Assad sided with Iran in the Iran-Iraq war. His choice was confirmed when he learned that America was supplying both up-to-the-minute satellite intelligence to Saddam’s forces and the chemicals with which the Iraqis manufactured poison gas to attack the Iranians. Assad took this as proof that somehow Saddam had become an American agent. Thus, Saddam became as much the ogre in the bestiary of Hafaz al-Assad as he later became in America’s. This explains why, in 1991, when Iraq invaded Kuwait, Hafez al-Assad sided with the American-led, anti-Saddam coalition. As in the Afghan war against the Russians, the insurgents are split into mutually hostile groups. This has made them impossible to defeat. The second (Bashar) al-Assad regime began when Hafez al-Assad died in 2000. Like his father had done after the Battle of Hama, Bashar initially made conciliatory moves to his opponents, including allowing the Muslim Brotherhood to resume political activities and withdrawing most of the Syrian troops that had occupied strife-torn Lebanon. But, while he legitimized his position through an election, he quickly showed that he was also following his father’s authoritarian path: ‘Run your own lives privately and enrich yourselves as you wish, but do not challenge my government.’ The lack of political participation, fear of public demands, and severe police measures made the regime appear to be a tyranny.

II.

SYRIAN CIVIL WAR

Syria's turmoil began with protests against President Bashar al-Assad's regime in March 2011. Syrians took to the streets. They were inspired by the protests in Tunisia and wanted to bring about economic and political change. The Syrian government responded to the demonstrations by arresting a group of children and teenagers for writing political graffiti. Moreover, Assad suspended most constitutional protections, banned spontaneous rallies, restricted media freedom, permitted arbitrary detention and allowed the violent crackdown on protesters to continue. The U.S. and the EU responded by imposing or tightening sanctions for what they termed gross violations of human rights. Over the next year, skirmishes were fought all over the country. The clashes devolved into bloodbaths and prompted the start of a civil war. In Homs, known as the “Capital of the Revolution,” thousands gathered in the main square on April 17 for a peaceful sit-in demonstration. Assad sent in government security forces, which killed at least 62 people. Over the next two years, the streets of Homs became the epicenter for the battle between the Syrian Army and the opposition. Clashes occurred on almost a daily basis as authorities blocked access to food, fuel and medical care. Rebels fought back with car bombs and sniper fire, often killing civilians in the crossfire. Control of the city has switched hands many times; these pitched battles have forced thousands of residents to flee and reduced buildings to rubble. During this time, the opposition formed the Syrian National Coalition for Opposition and Revolutionary Forces. This group was intended to bring together members of different sects within the country that were opposed to Assad. The coalition is supported by the Free Syrian Army, which is mostly comprised of former Syrian police officers and soldiers. The Free Syrian Army, which numbers between 50,000 and 100,000, also includes untrained citizens, who simply rose up against an oppressive regime. The rebel army's ranks have also been assisted by extremists from other countries in the region. These fierce and organized fighters joined the rebels to stop Assad because they have a religious opposition to his Alawite regime and to gain a foothold in the region. Experts say the al-Nusra Front, an offshoot of the group al Qaeda in Iraq, is among the most effective forces in Syria. In March 2012, former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan went to Syria to seek a cease-fire and to get Assad to release the detained protesters. His mission, however, failed. In July 2012, the head of the Syrian Foreign Ministry threatened to use chemical and biological weapons against what he described as "outside forces." This threat was one of the many reasons Annan decided to walk away from the peace mission. By spring 2013, reports of chemical weapon attacks started trickling out of Syria. Doctors confirmed that more than 3,000 patients had been treated for exposure to chemical attacks while more than 300 of the victims died. Diplomatic efforts at a peaceful resolution of the crisis led by Kofi Annan have failed decisively, leading to Annan's resignation in August 2012. This is partly due to disagreements between Russia, Syria’s traditional ally, and the West. The US, long at odds with Syria over its links to Iran, has called on Assad to resign. Russia, which has substantial interests in Syria, has insisted that Syrians alone should decide the fate of

their government. In the absence of an international agreement on a common approach, Gulf Arab governments and Turkey are stepping up military and financial assistance for Syrian rebels. Meanwhile, Russia continues to back Assad’s regime with weapons and diplomatic support while Iran, Assad’s key regional ally, provides the regime with financial assistance. Nevertheless, the reason why United Nations failed to interfere with the abovementioned conflict is primarily due to the fact that two of its permanent members in the Security Council (Russia and China) vetoed three resolutions of the Security Council. As such, no direct intervention was made.

III.

CONCLUSION

The civil war has caused appalling number of deaths, existence of illnesses, growing number of refugees, and human rights violation. In fact, United Nations reported that around 100,000 people were slaughtered and 2 million were forced out of the country. Certainly, it’s a sad reality. Personally, I believe that the current situation in Syria is not merely a result of the minority ruling a majority. Some of those who are supported by external powers would like the conflict to be seen in this way, but the changes the people seek have nothing to do with Assad coming from a minority. This atrocity is brought about by violence and greed for power. This, perhaps, is a manifestation of Thomas Hobbe’s state of nature whereby every man is against every man. The war, however, is not permanent and a normal life could be attained through the efforts of the next generation. Change is the only constant thing in the world. The change the Syrians desire with all their hearts is the change from oppression to freedom, from corruption to the rule of law, from dictatorship to democracy. This change would be to the great benefit of all Syrians. As a Political Science student, I perceive this issue as detrimental not only to the Syrians but to all other nationalities in the world. It is clearly imperative that the conflict should have to be systematically addressed. The following are my proposed actions which should be considered: United Nations’ intervention, replacement of Assad’s regime with another form of government, enforcement of the military to disarm, and occurrence of new election. All of these actions may seem difficult but these are necessary, beneficial, and practical.

IV.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Walker, J. “Everything You Need To Know About Syria's Turbulent History And Why It Matters Today” retrieved on February 22, 2014 from www.huffingtonpost.com http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-14703995 Manfreda, P. “Current Situation in Syria” retrieved on February 22, 2014 from www. middleeast.about.com