Syria

1

Syria The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity and Nationalism Omar Al-Ghazzi Abstract In post-2011 Syria, a long simmering crisis of national identity has imploded into a widespread popular uprising and then civil war. The raging conflict exposed how since the creation of the Syrian state, the system of governance has often exacerbated sectarian and ethnic differences and affiliations to place of origin within Syria. Cross-cutting cleavages between sect, class, place origin, and ideology have shaped configurations of nationalism throughout Syrian modern history. Main text With a population of about 23 million people, Syria is a religiously and ethnically diverse country. Roughly 70 percent of Syrians are Sunni Muslims, 12 percent are Christian (mostly Orthodox Christians), 12 percent are Alawite and the rest are mainly Druze (both latter sects are heterodox offshoots of Islam). Syrian Christians are geographically dispersed in various parts of the country, in both urban and rural areas. Alawites hail from the Mediterranean coastal region; while the Druze are concentrated in the south, mainly the Suwaida Province. The majority of Syrian Jews have left the country in successive waves, immigrating to the Americas or Israel. Most Syrians are Arabic-speaking and ethnically self-identify as Arab. The Kurdish community (mostly Sunni Muslim), comprising about 10 percent of the population and concentrated in the northeast region, is an important exception, in addition to the smaller Armenian, Circassian, Turcoman and Chaldo-Assyrian ethnic communities. The Ottoman Empire, which controlled the Levant region from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries, originated more recent forms of community governance in Syria. The Ottomans administered non-Muslim religious communities as discrete millets, recognizing their religious hierarchies and allowing them to have their own communal legal systems. As Ottoman power over the region began to wane, European countries intensified political and cultural ties with different religious communities. A main example is the French political sponsorship of Christians, particularly the Maronites of Mount Lebanon. With the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, France and Great Britain set the borders of states in the Levant under the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916. During its mandate over Syria, France sought to expand the legacy of the millet system by encouraging separatism and autonomy of the Alawites in the coast and the Druze in the south (White, 2007). However, most Syrians considered the further regional division into distinct entities as a colonial plot to divide and rule, especially after European powers thwarted plans for united Arab rule in the region. Syrian nationalists from all religious communities sought independence from France, which was gained in 1946 following waves of revolts and negotiations. In fact, since the nineteenth century, many Arab intellectuals became influenced by European forms of nationalism. In particular, Levantine Christians have historically played a substantial role in emphasizing a national and secular basis of collective identity as opposed to Islamic conceptions of identity. While nationalism previously served as a basis for mobilization against Ottoman Turkish rule, it later took the form of an anti-colonial movement. Like other postcolonial contexts, the legacy of colonialism played a major role in the conception of Syrian nationalism(s). Many Syrians considered the influx of European Jews into Palestine under the

2

Zionist movement and the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 as a continuation of the colonization of the region. These developments fueled pan-regional nationalism in Syria, whether pan-Arab and pan-Levantine or Islamist in nature. The 1950s witnessed the apex of the Arab nationalist movement that sought the political unity of “the Arab people” (al-sha’b al-‘arabi) from the Gulf to the (Atlantic) Ocean, per the popular saying. Attracted by charismatic Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel-Nasser, many Syrians demanded unity with Egypt, which was achieved in 1958 (under the name United Arab Republic) but lasted only three years— as powerful Syrian military officers rebelled against what they considered Egyptian domination. As all political parties were banned under Abdel-Nasser, the unity’s legacy marked an end to a period of vibrancy in Syrian political life and paved the way for the authoritarian rule of the socialist and pan-Arabist Ba’th (Renaissance) Party. On the ideological level, the resounding defeat of Arab armies against Israel in the 1967 war proved to be a fatal blow to the ascendancy of secular Arab nationalist thought. The war resulted in the lasting Israeli occupation of Syria’s Golan Heights, only a small part of which was regained during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. As the case with several Arab countries, the army in the newly independent Syria had been playing an increasing role in political life. On the level of Syrian sects, the coastal Alawite community was disproportionately represented in the army. Long marginalized in political life, and largely isolated from the urban hubs of economic activity, Alawites saw the army as a convenient vehicle for social mobility and political influence. Hafez al-Asad was one of several Alawite officers to rise through army ranks. After a power struggle with fellow officers, the Ba’thist Al-Asad launched a coup d’état and became president from 1971 until his death in 2000. Al-Asad ruled the country with an iron fist and purged its institutions from any potential opposition, which also boosted Alawite control over the high ranks of the army. Against the backdrop of Ba’thist pan-Arab nationalist and anti-Zionist rhetoric, the Syrian regime created a cult of Al-Asad’s leadership, propagating slogans about his supreme and eternal rule (Wedeen, 1999). The country itself became referred to as “Al-Asad’s Syria” in regime propaganda. The Muslim Brotherhood delivered the most serious internal challenge to Al-Asad’s rule. Founded in Egypt in 1928 and officially established in Syria in 1945, the Brotherhood propagated an Islamic basis of collective identity, social structure and political governance— in contrast to secular nationalism. In Syria, the Brotherhood’s popularity grew in the 1970s after the decline of pan-Arab nationalism, especially in cities like Hama and Aleppo, whose Sunni elite lost considerable influence by what many considered Alawite central rule from Damascus (Lefèvre, 2013). Protests and violent confrontations between the army and Brotherhood supporters culminated in 1982 in what came to be known as the Hama massacre, where an uprising was met with a military operation that killed thousands of civilians, destroyed parts of Hama’s Old City, and crushed the Brotherhood in Syria. In the year 2000, Bashar al-Asad became president, following the death of his father. While maintaining a similar level of authoritarian control, the young president introduced significant changes in economic policy, allowing privatization of certain sectors and pursuing open market measures. The new economic structure benefitted the urban elite, led to an increase in corruption and cronyism, multiplied the wealth of the small ruling circle, and exacerbated the economic gap between the rich and poor. Bashar’s regime also dropped the outlandish statements about the supremacy of the Syrian ruling figure and propagated instead an image of a modern and young president (Wedeen, 2013). References to Ba’thist Arab nationalism were curtailed and expressions of nationalism toward the Syrian state encouraged (Al-Ghazzi, 2013).

3

Following the popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt in early 2011, which shook the region and the world, Syrian officials hoped that the popularity of Syrian foreign policy would prevent a spillover of revolutionary fervor. Most Syrians looked favorably upon the regime’s opposition to the 2003 Anglo-American invasion of Iraq and its support of groups fighting Israeli occupation in Lebanon and Palestine, such as Hezbollah and Hamas. However, in March 2011, the regime’s arrest and torture of teenagers who sprayed revolutionary slogans on a school wall in the southern city of Dara’a proved enough incitement to incrementally set in motion a nationwide popular uprising. Although many figures representing various Syrian communities supported the uprising, working class and lower middle class Sunni youths represented the bulk of protestors. Regardless that the protestors were unarmed in their call for political freedoms, the regime’s reaction was an army crackdown against rebellious areas. Groups of armed thugs, known in Syria as shabiha, were unleashed to kill and torture opposition activists. The death toll was in the thousands. Given the situation, within a year, the opposition took up arms against the regime and the conflict turned into a full -scale civil war, with the regime losing control over territory. First the opposition was united under the banner of the Free Syrian Army. However, soon after many Islamist rebel groups were established. Eventually, the regime used the full force of the army, including war planes, against civilian areas and rebel strongholds. Many factors complicated the Syrian conflict. The fact that security forces prevented protestors from gathering in public squares meant that mosques were the only available public spaces for protest. This exacerbated the fears of Christians and other minorities that the uprising was more about Islamic rule than democratization. Class dynamics also steered the uprising’s course as much of the upper and middle classes, particularly in Damascus and Aleppo, stood on the sidelines of the conflict. As it progressed, the struggle took a more religious and sectarian character. The oil-rich Islamic regimes of Shi’ite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia fueled the conflict. The two regional powers were already involved in a regional standoff, which was only exacerbated by Iran’s dramatic empowerment following the ousting of its rival— the Sunni regime in Iraq. The influence of Saudi hardline Wahabi funders also led to the radicalization of Syrian rebel groups. By 2013, foreign fighters poured into the country. Shi’ite Lebanese, Iraqi and Iranian fighters and military experts on the side of the Alawite regime, and Sunni fighters from across the world, particularly those previously active in war-torn Iraq, on the side of opposition rebel groups. By 2014, it is estimated that more than 100,000 Syrians were killed, four million fled the country, and millions more became internally displaced. As of January 2014, the regime controls central Damascus and the coastal region, in addition to parts of Aleppo, Homs, and Hama. The long-discriminated against Kurdish community formed its own militias and took over areas in the northeast; while different mostly Islamist rebel groups control the north and the east of the warring country. Conceptions of nationalism, whether based on Syrian national or pan-regional images, in addition to loyalty to religion, sect, and place, are not fixed primordial identities. Rather, their interpretation and operationalization in political life is dependent on several other factors, such as the system of governance in place, the regional political situation, and economic wealth distribution. References: Al-Ghazzi, O. 2013. “Nation as neighborhood: how Bab al-Hara dramatized Syrian identity.” Media, Culture & Society 35(5): 586-601. doi:10.1177/0163443713485493 Lefèvre, R. 2013. Ashes of Hama: the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria. London: Hurst & Company.

4

Wedeen, L. 1999. Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria, 1st edition. University Of Chicago Press. Wedeen, L. 2013. “Ideology and Humor in Dark Times: Notes from Syria.” Critical Inquiry 39(4): 841-873. doi:10.1086/671358 White, B. 2007. “The Nation-State Form and the Emergence of ‘Minorities’ in Syria.” Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 7(1): 64-85. doi:10.1111/j.1754-9469.2007.tb00108.x