Roots and Weakness of the Syrian State
The seeds of modern Syria were sown in negotiations between Great Britain, France, and their other allies during the First World War. When planning the future of the region in the warâs aftermath, Britain was especially interested in securing a land bridge from Iraq to the Mediterranean in order to transport Iraqi oil through territory it controlled. France, by contrast, had vaguer goals in mindâprimarily the desire to emerge from the war with its colonial empire enhanced.1 Franceâs claims to the region included an interest, manifest since the 1860s, in protecting the Christians of the Levant, the Lebanese Maronites. The Sykes-Picot Agreement of May 1916 reflected Franceâs desire to control the Levant, namely the area covered currently by Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and the Palestinian authority.
Shortly after the war the League of Nations accorded France a mandate for Syria and Lebanon.
At that stage, the French government opposed the very notion of Syrian statehood, viewing the principal political force in the Syrian heartlandâSunni Arab nationalistsâwith suspicion and hostility.2 In French eyes, modern Arab nationalism was actually a British creation, a force and a movement hostile to Franceâs interests and aspirations. So upon taking control of Syria and Lebanon in 1920, the architects of French policy in Syria refrained from creating a unitary Syrian state, forming instead a Syrian federation composed of several statelets characterized by sectarian division and regional rivalries. They also added parts of Syria in southeastern and northern Lebanon to the Lebanese state, seeking to enlarge the entity they viewed as the mainstay of their position in the area. It was only five years later, in 1925, that a Syrian state was established. Two statelets populated by the Alawi and Druze minorities were integrated into that entity in 1945, when in the aftermath of World War II and under American and British pressure Syria was accorded independence. The newly independent Syria was governed by the traditional Arab nationalist elite, composed mostly of urban notables and landlords. This leadership had struggled against French control during the previous decades but failed to mobilize and lead a successful national war of liberation. Thus, France left Syria not as a result of expulsion by a nationalist opposition but rather as a result of pressure from the United States and Britain. These victorious wartime powers concluded that the French claim to Syria and Lebanon had expired, and they sought to absorb the new Syrian and Lebanese states into their spheres of influence.3
The Syrian Republic emerged as a weak and fragile state. Through the late 1940s and the 1950s Syria would become synonymous with instability. The traditional Arab nationalist politicians who came to power upon independence failed to form a stable, effective regime; the country was buffeted by internal divisions and conflicts, the intervention of regional and foreign powers, and successive coups dâĂ©tat. Three military coups were staged in Syria in 1949 alone, and even the return to parliamentary life in 1954 failed to stabilize the chaotic state.
The rulers of a newly independent Syria had to cope with a vast array of challenges, first and foremost the need to engage in nation and state building. The population was diverse, with an Arab Sunni majority of 60 percent, and the rest composed of several religious and ethnic minorities: 10 percent Alawis, 10 percent Christians, 10 percent Kurds, and such smaller groups as the Druze, Ismailis, and Armenians. The Kurds were Sunni but not Arab, and most of them lived in the countryâs northeastern part close to the Turkish and Iraqi borders. The Alawis and the Druze were so-called âcompact minorities,â concentrated in mountainous areas, and their separatist tendencies had been encouraged by the French authorities earlier in the century to weaken the Sunni Arab nationalist elite of Syriaâs major cities.
The fledgling new Syrian state was pulled in opposite directions, between supranational ideologies and identities (Arab and Greater Syrian) and the reality of regionalism and localism. Syria was ruled by staunch Arab nationalists, and Damascus was commonly known as âArabismâs pulsating heart.â The Kurdish minority naturally felt alienated in a country defined as Arab, and many Kurds did not actually possess Syrian citizenship. They crossed the border from Turkey and were not accorded citizenship by Syrian Arab nationalist governments, which were uninterested in expanding the ranks of this non-Arab minority. Other minorities, such as Christian and sectarian Muslims (Alawis, Druze, and Ismailis), regarded the dominant ideology of Pan-Arab nationalism to be an essentially Sunni Arab phenomenon in which they were relegated to an inferior position as members of minority sectarian groups. (Christians had played an important role in formulating the ideology of Pan-Arabism, but their hope of becoming equal members in a new political community were frustrated by Arabismâs Sunni tincture.) A new postindependence generation of younger Syrians, defined neither by sect nor by ethnic affiliation but as âa new middle class,â felt excluded and exploited by the traditional governing elite. There was also tension between the civilian government and the leadership of the Syrian army, since that army had been built originally on the colonial auxiliary military force formed by the French authorities. As part of their policy of âdivide and rule,â the French had sought out military recruits from members of minority communities, and army commanders from these groups were treated with disdain by civilian politicians. Syrian politicians, in turn, were divided among themselves by personal and regional rivalries, with individual political actors forming alliances with rival regional and external powers seeking to manipulate Syriaâs politics. Internal tensions were exacerbated by the unsuccessful war with Israel in 1948â49.4
The rise of messianic Pan-Arab nationalism in the region, under Gamal Abd al-Nasserâsecond president of Egyptâand the impact of the Cold War and Soviet influence in the region in the 1950s further radicalized Syrian politics. In February 1958, Syriaâs leaders, led by the Baâth, finally sought refuge by merging themselves with Egypt into what became known as the United Arab Republic (UAR). But the UAR proved to be a failure; the much larger and more assertive Egypt ended up dominating Syria. Paradoxically, the union reinforced a sense of Syrian distinctiveness owing to the bitter experience of Syriaâs being overwhelmed and overshadowed by Egypt. In September 1961 Syria seceded from the UAR and reestablished itself as an independent state. Egyptâs Nasser refused to accept the secession and attempted to undermine the newly formed Syrian state by speaking over the heads of the Syrian government to the Syrian public directly via radio broadcasts. Nasser had retained some lingering support among Syrian politicians and army officers. It was against this backdrop that a group of officers identified with the Baâth Party staged their coup on March 8, 1963, thus laying the foundation for decades of Baâthi rule. Ironically, it was a party advocating Arab unity and union that consolidated Syriaâs existence as a self-standing sovereign state.
The Baâth in Power
The Baâth has been nominally in power in Syria ever since the military coup of March 8, 1963âbut it has undergone several transformations.5 Known in Arabic as the âSocialist Party of Arab Renaissance,â the Baâth Party was first founded in the 1940s by two Damascene intellectuals: Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Bitar. The party offered a secular version of Arab nationalism combined with a social democratic ideology. Its secularism attracted members of minority communities, and its social democratic ideology attracted younger men who were critical of the traditional ruling elite and who sought social and political change. In 1953, the original Baâth founding party merged with another party formed by a politician from the central Syrian city of Hama: Akram Hourani. Hourani had recruited to his party young army officers and mobilized peasants in the countryside against the traditional political elite under the banner of Arab socialism. Hourani brought to the augmented Baâth Party both voting power and influence in the military. The combined partyâwhich spread beyond purely Syria, to Iraq, Lebanon, and Jordanâdid well in parliamentary elections, particularly in the elections of 1954, and played an important role in the ongoing radicalization of Syrian politics, and in championing the ill-fated union with Egypt, aiming for a leading role in Pan-Arab politics. But the partyâs hopes of genuine partnership with Abd al-Nasser were to be frustrated; Nasser wanted full mastery of the political sphere. The Baâth became a hostile critic of the Nasserist regime, and some of its leaders turned to facilitating instead the breakup from the UAR and rebuilding Syrian independence.
The partyâs rise to power in Syria came about in an unusual way. A group of army officersâmembers of the party, most of them from minority communitiesâformed a secret cabal known as âthe Military Committeeâ during the union with Egypt. This was the group that planned and executed the coup on March 8, 1963, quickly forming a partnership with the traditional leadership of the Baâth to establish the Baâth regime.
The first phase of the Baâth regime lasted from March 1963 to February 1966. During this period the new regime consolidated its hold over the country, confronting both Nasserâs pressure from outside and the enmity of the Sunni urban elite and middle class at home. It carried out several socialist reforms, including nationalizing large enterprises and an agrarian reform distributing land owned by major landowners to peasants. Consequently, the state and the public sector came to dominate the economy, and the regime enjoyed support in the countryside among the beneficiaries of the agrarian reform. Yet the new regime was also torn by internecine conflicts: between the army officers who had staged the coup and who consequently felt they owned the regime, and the historical leadership of the Baâth; and between the partyâs more moderate wing and a new radical, Marxist wing that had emerged during the union with Egypt. The regime as a whole found itself in conflict with the Sunni urban elite, the religious establishment, and the merchant classes. These groups felt dispossessed and alienated: by the large number of minority members (Alawis, Druze, and Ismailis) in the ranks of the regimeâs military wing; and by the radicalism and secularism of part of its leadership.
The overrepresentation of minoritarian officers in the ranks of the new regimeâparticularly its military wingâturned sectarian and communal issues into a major element in Syrian politics. This overrepresentation had its origins, first, in French colonial âdivide and ruleâ practices of recruiting officers and noncommissioned officers from minority communities, and second, in the attraction that young men of these same minority communities, wary of the Sunni orientation of Arab nationalism, had to secular political parties. In the 1940s and 1950s two secular parties, the Baâth and the SSNP (Syrian Social Nationalist Party), competed for the hearts and minds young Alawis, Druze, Ismailis, and Christians across all Syria, adding them in large numbers to their ranks.
In Baâthi Syria, sectarian solidarity became a major political force for the first time, particularly as individuals and factions within the regime began to fight over position and influence. In Arabic, the term taâifiyyah refers to social and political allegiance and conduct determined by sectarian and ethnic affiliation. The term Taâifah referred to a religious community. In the Ottoman system, the Islamic empireâheaded by a sultan, also regarded as a caliphâhad no problem giving religious groups known as millets a large degree of autonomy in the so-called millet system. But once Arab nationalist sentiment replaced allegiance to the Ottoman caliph, all ultimate loyalty to such primordial groups as sects and tribes came to be seen as retrograde. The prominent role played by members of minority communities in the new regime was therefore unacceptable to many Sunnis, whoâin addition to feeling dispossessedârefused to accept Alawis and (to a lesser extent) Druze as proper Muslims. In 1964, the Syrian branch of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood Islamist movement organized an early protest in Hama against the regimeâs secularist nature; a second outburst against the regimeâs secularism and socialism broke out in Homs in 1965. A third protest occurred in 1967 following the publication of an atheistic essay in the Syrian armyâs magazine authored by a radical Alawi Baâthi intellectual.
The principal challenge to the Baâth regime, however, remained Abd al-Nasserâs refusal to accept Syriaâs secession from the UAR and the new regimeâs legitimacy. In 1963, Syria signed a tripartite union with Egypt and the new Baâth Party regime in Iraq in an attempt to consolidate its hold over the country. This short-lived abortive agreement was never to be implemented because of the underlying hostility between Nasser and the two Baâth regimes.
In late 1963, in an effort to neutralize Nasserâs animosity, the Baâth regime adopted a radical new strategy vis-Ă -vis Egyptâa strategy that would play a major role in escalating Arab-Israeli tensions in the years 1964â67, and which would ultimately lead to the crisis of May 1967 and to the Six-Day War. Simply put, Syria threatened to go to war against Israel and to drag Egypt into that war against the latterâs will. The Syrian threat was triggered by Israelâs completion of an overland water carrier (consisting of both a canal and a pipeline) from Lake Tiberias to the south of the country. In Arab eyes, the completion of the project was seen as a crucial step in consolidating Israelâs existence by enabling it to settle the countryâs arid southern region. When Israel announced the project, the Baâth regime threatened to go to war in order to abort it. The threat was in fact directed at Egypt rather than at Israel.6 Implicit behind this was the knowledge that a Syrian-Israeli war would end in Syriaâs military defeatâwhich would force Egypt to intervene on Syriaâs behalf. Nasser had already learned from the Second Arab-Israeli War of 1956 that it was imperative for Egypt not to be drawn prematurely to another war with Israel. So, in order to check Syria, in January 1964 Nasser summoned the first Arab summit conference in Cairo, to develop a comprehensive strategy for dealing with Israelâs water project and other core issues of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It would not be the last time Syriaâs Baâthi rulers would use the threat of escalation with Israel as a means of pressuring Egypt to recognize Syriaâs legitimacy as an independent state. Much as Nasser resented the new regime in Syria, he realized that he could not afford to see it militarily destroyed by Israel. The resolutions adopted in Cairoâto divert the tributaries of the Jordan River, to build unified Arab command in support of that move, and to support the establishment of the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization, an organization created by the Arab League, dominated by Egypt)âwould inaugurate a new phase in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Their strategy proved effective, but it also would bring the region to the brink of war in May 1967.
Meanwhile, internecine conflicts within the Baâth regime in Syria were coalescing by 1965 into a struggle between two coalitions. One was led by the countryâs president, the Sunni general Amin al-Hafez, along with the Baâth Partyâs historic civilian leadership and a supportive military faction; the other consisted of a group of mostly Alawi and Druze army officers, along with the civilian partyâs radical wing. In February 1966, the latter groupâknown as the Neo-Baâthâstaged a coup and took control of the regime. The coup of February 23, 1966, would have far-reaching consequences. The new regime in power had a more distinctive sectarian character and a much narrower base of support. The new regime had a difficult dilemma to resolve right off the bat: How could it legitimize its conduct as a Baâth regime when it had expelled the partyâs founding fathers? In an effort to overcome this problem, the regime now argued that the Baâth Partyâs true founder was Zaki al-Arsuzi, an Alawi intellectual from Alexandretta (the Syrian province ceded to Turkey by France on the eve of World War II). The fact that Arsuzi was Alawi suited the countryâs new rulers. The Baâth regime had previously dispossessed and antagonized Syriaâs urban Sunni elite during its first three years of power, but some of its leaders, including Amin al-Hafez and Salah al-Bitar, still managed to communicate with members of the countryâs ousted elite, in order to minimize its opposition to the regime and to guarantee broader base of support. After February 1966 these lines of communication were completely severed, and the regime relied on an extremely slender base consisting of radical intellectuals as well as pro...