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This is the second part of a 4-part series, so if you haven’t read part 1, you can find it here.
The History of Syria
The History Channel laid out a solid timeline of the earliest events known in the area. Syria is a region of the world with a long and storied history, rich in art and culture. It’s home to one of the oldest cities in the world, dating back to roughly 3,000 B.C., with the oldest human remains dating back more than 700,000 years.
Ancient Syria has even played a major role in religious history. In one passage of the Bible, the Apostle, Paul, accounts that while traveling the “road to Damascus”- the largest city in Syria- to arrest the early disciples of Jesus in Jerusalem, he saw a great light. The resurrected Jesus appeared to him and he was struck blind. After 3 days his sight was restored, and Paul began to preach that Jesus of Nazareth was the Jewish Messiah and the Son of God.
Throughout ancient times, Syria has been occupied and ruled by several empires, including Egyptians, Hittites, Sumerians, Mitanni, Assyrians, Babylonians, Canaanites, Phoenicians, Arameans, Persians, Greeks, and Romans.
When the Roman Empire fell, Syria became part of the Eastern or Byzantine Empire. In 637 A.D., Muslim armies defeated the Byzantine Empire and took control of Syria. The Islamic religion quickly spread throughout the region, and its different factions rose to power.
Damascus eventually became the capital of the Islamic world but was replaced by Baghdad in Iraq around 750 A.D. This caused the beginning of an economic decline in Syria, which caused several centuries of instability in which the different factions competed for control of the country.
In 1516, the Ottoman Empire conquered Syria and remained in power until 1918.
As these events show, Syria has a long and prominent history relevant to shaping not only their own culture but much of modern society’s as well.
World War I and The Great Syrian Revolt
In his book, The Great Syrian Revolt and the Rise of Arab Nationalism, Michael Provence discusses the events in the early 20th Century that would shape the region for the better part of the century. During World War I, France and Britain secretly agreed to divide the Ottoman Empire into regions or zones, as part of the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916. Most Arab lands under the rule of the Ottoman Empire were divided into British or French colonies at the conclusion of WWI.
British and Arab troops captured Damascus and Aleppo in 1918, and the French took control of modern-day Syria and Lebanon in 1920. This ended roughly 400 years of Ottoman rule in the region.
The French reign led to uprisings and revolts across Syria- the Great Syrian Revolt from 1925-1927. The purpose of the revolt was to oust the French from the country. The uprising was unsuccessful because the different factions fighting against the French weren’t centralized and were disorganized. Among the different factions were the Sunni, Druze, Alawite, Christian, and Shia. Colonialism has played a major part not only in southwest Asia, but also Africa, and Eastern Europe as well. It has shaped many of the religions and cultures of these countries, but it’s also created a lot of animosity and division. Today’s civil wars can be traced back to the times when these regions were colonized.
Colonization across the globe has led to all sorts of rebellions and revolutions (1776, anyone?).
Independence For Syria…Sort of
In 1936, France and Syria negotiated a treaty of independence, which allowed Syria to remain independent but gave France military and economic power in the country (Encyclopedia Britannica).
During World War II, British and Free French Troops occupied Syria, but shortly after the war ended, Syria officially became an independent country in 1946.
The years immediately following Syria’s declared independence were marked by instability and repeated government coups. Syria joined with Egypt and became the United Arab Republic in 1958, but the union split in 1961.
In 1963, the Arab Socialist Baath Party, which had been active in the Middle East since the late 1940s, seized power of Syria in a coup known as the Baath Revolution.
In 1967, during the Six Day War, Israel seized the Golan Heights, a rocky plateau located in Southwestern Syria. Conflict over this key piece of terrain has continued since (BBC News).
The Assad Regime
The Institute for the Study of War profiles the Assad regime from 1970 until present. In 1970, Hafez al-Assad, the Syrian Minister of Defense, overthrew the de facto leader of Syria, Salah Jadid. Al-Assad remained in power as president for 30 years, until his death in 2000.
Hafez al-Assad was part of the Islam Alawite, which is a minority Shiite sect. During his presidency, Hafez was credited with strengthening the Syrian military with the help of the Soviets, and then Russia.
Syria and Egypt went to war with Israel in 1973. Shortly after this conflict, Syria also got involved in the civil war in Lebanon, where it has maintained a military presence ever since.
In 1982, the Muslim Brotherhood organized a rebellion against the Assad regime in the city of Hama, and Assad responded by arresting, torturing, and executing political rebels. Estimates vary, but many experts believe the retaliation took the lives of about 20,000 civilians.
The same year, Israel invaded Lebanon and attacked the Syrian Army stationed there. But, by 1983, Israel and Lebanon announced that hostility between the two countries was over.
In 2000, upon his death, Hafez’s son, Bashar, assumed the presidency. He amended the Syrian Constitution to reduce the minimum age of the president from 40 to 34. Bashar seemed to pick up where his father left off- using threats and arrests to stop pro-reform activism.
The regime had placed itself in not only a position of power but one of control over the entirety of the people of Syria. Al-Assad used this control to shape the political landscape to his benefit.
Syria and the ‘Axis of Evil’
In 2002, the United States accused Syria of acquiring weapons of mass destruction and listed the nation as a member of the so-called “axis of evil” countries. The Syrian government was also accused of being involved in the assassination of Rafic Hariri, the Lebanese Prime Minister, in 2005.
After a few years of what seemed like potential diplomacy between Assad and other nations, the United States renewed sanctions against Syria in 2010, claiming that the regime supported terrorist groups.
Many human rights groups reported that Assad regularly tortured, imprisoned, and killed political adversaries over the years. The use of chemical weapons in Syria, by the Assad regime, has been confirmed by the United Nations (BBC News).
The “Arab Spring”
In late 2010, a revolutionary wave of both violent and non-violent demonstrations, protests, riots, coups, foreign interventions and civil wars in Northern Africa and the Middle East erupted with the Tunisian Revolution. The revolution spread strongly to five other countries: Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, and Bahrain. Authorities in these countries responded with swift and violent aggression, ending the majority of these protests by mid-2012.
NPR highlighted a story that sums up the emotional climate of the time very well:
A year ago, 26-year-old Mohamed Bouazizi was getting ready to sell fruits and vegetables in the rural town of Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia.
Bouazizi was the breadwinner for his widowed mother and six siblings, but he didn’t have a permit to sell the goods. When the police asked Bouazizi to hand over his wooden cart, he refused and a policewoman allegedly slapped him.
Angered after being publicly humiliated, Bouazizi marched in front of a government building and set himself on fire.
His act of desperation resonated immediately with others in the town. Protests began that day in Sidi Bouzid, captured by cellphone cameras and shared on the Internet.
Within days, protests started popping up across the country, calling upon President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and his regime to step down. About a month later, he fled.
The region was primed for change.
The Beginning of the Syrian Civil War
The “Arab Spring” caused the outbreak of a few other major conflicts, one of those was the Syrian Civil War. War wreaks havoc on a nation’s resources, and this instance was no different. The Assad regime responded brutally and decisively against protestors, and in like, withheld resources from much of the nation’s citizens. Hunger is the often overlooked side effect of poverty, and during the economic crisis of the Assad regime, hunger ran rampant. The people were angry, protests were escalating across the entire Middle East, and it wouldn’t be long before an event unified the people against the government.
Unlikely Revolutionaries
The Globe and Mail broke the story of who, if it’s possible to put it all on one person, was responsible for turning the protests into a full-blown revolution. A child, hanging out with older kids when these protests broke out, trying to fit in, became the face of a revolution. The world was an exciting place for teens and children at the time. They didn’t understand the socio-political climate, but rather just knew “something” was going on. A change was happening on every corner. It would be hard to not get sucked up into the heat of the moment. And that’s exactly what happened to Naief Abazid. He didn’t know it at the time, but he was about to spark a revolution that. 7 years later, would still be going strong.
Dictatorships were falling all over the Middle East as the people rose up against their governments. It looked like it was going to happen in Syria any day now, and so when Naief spray-painted the phrase, “It’s your turn, Doctor Bashar al-Assad”, under the window of the principal’s office of the all-boys al-Banin school in Daraa, it served as the catalyst for civil war. It wasn’t the message itself that sparked the revolution, but rather what happened next.
Naief was arrested for his actions on that cool February evening. The Assad regime captured the boy not long after the act and tortured him for weeks. Because of this, the protests in Syria intensified. People took to the streets in hordes all over the country demanding for the release of the child. The Assad regime responded by deploying security forces to areas where the heaviest protests were happening. Soon, the response turned deadly as a shooting left multiple protesters dead in the middle of the street.
Naief was eventually released and swept up by rebel forces to be shipped out of the country as fast as possible for his own safety, but it was too late. Those few, simple words had already made their mark and altered the future of a nation.
Hunger, a little graffiti on a school wall, and a couple stray rounds fired by security forces into a crowd all conspired together to spiral a country into a civil war that that is ongoing today, 7 years later.
The Future of Syria
One can never know what will spark a revolution, or even once the revolution is incited if it will hold, but in Syria, the people have proven they will not go quietly into the night. The situation on the ground has become convoluted with many different outside forces taking part in the war. It seems as though every faction in Syria is trying to serve their own wants, be it a foothold in the Middle East, an unencumbered trade route for oil, religious differences, or the will to fight terrorism, outside forces are shaping Syria yet again.
Part 3
The series will dive into the different factions on the ground in Syria since 2011 and also the timeline of the civil war to date.
#WordsThatMatter
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Photo credit: Getty Images
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