Syria

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SYRIA

In the latter years of the Ottoman Empire, Syria was part of an administrative region that included Lebanon and Palestine (including western Jordan). In the last year of World War I, Greater Syria was occupied by forces commanded by Emir Faysal ibn Husayn al-Hashem, son of Sharif Husayn of Mecca and a leader of the British-sponsored Arab Revolt. Faysal was welcomed by the notables of Greater Syria, who were largely Arab nationalists, and was chosen by the National Assembly to be Syria's king. France, which was awarded a League of Nations mandate over Syria (without Palestine) in the postwar peace settlement, occupied the country and expelled Faysal in July 1920 (he was later installed by the British as king of Iraq). The French detached an enlarged Lebanon from Greater Syria and created the current borders of Syria in 1924. After it adopted a constitution for a sovereign Syria in 1928, the French dissolved the National Assembly and imposed a constitution in 1930. After much public protest, an agreement was reached in 1936 to grant independence in 1939, but it was suspended and martial law imposed at the beginning of World War II.

In June 1941, British and Free French forces captured Lebanon and Syria from the Vichy government, and the Free French, under political pressure, proclaimed the independence of both in November. After the war, however, France attempted to reimpose itself; but by then Syria had been allowed to join the United Nations, and France was persuaded to leave the country in 1946. Syria participated in the Arab-Israel War (1948) against Israel, sending one ill-prepared brigade into Galilee. Its failure contributed to the instability of the Syrian government. In March 1949 a coup d'état installed a military regime headed by Colonel Husni al-Za?im, who was assassinated the next year in another coup. Za?im was the first of five coup-installed leaders from 1949 to 1954, when a coalition of civilian parties and military officers took power and held a free parliamentary election with universal suffrage, the first in the Middle East. A centrist government was formed; under pressure from the public and from leftist groups such as the Ba?th Party, the country's largest, it legislated social reforms. Political tension led to the cancellation of elections in 1957.

Syria was weak, unstable and vulnerable to outside threats, from the West and particularly from subversive actions of conservative and royalist Iraq, whose own stability was threatened by the existence of left-leaning Arab governments. The less radical faction of the Ba?th was faced with the prospect of forming a government with either the conservatives or the communists. This faction promoted the idea of a federation between Syria and the larger, more populous and more powerful Egypt, then at the height of its Nasserist prestige in the Arab world. The National Assembly voted for union, and Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser was persuaded to accept, though on terms decidedly favorable to Egypt.

The United Arab Republic (UAR) was created in February 1958, with Nasser as president and Cairo as its capital. Structured as a unitary state rather than a federation, it featured structural changes and policy measures that alienated politically important elements of Syrian society—landholders, the middle class, politicians, and the officer corps. Later changes to state structures such as abolition of local autonomy, and the planned unification of currencies, furthered centralized control, and government policies were based primarily on Egyptian conditions. Dissatisfaction grew, and there was growing talk of secession. In September 1961, Syrian army officers staged a coup d'état in Damascus and Nasser chose not to fight it. The UAR was dissolved in September 1961. There followed two years of extreme political tension among those advocating the maintenance of a nationalized economy, those favoring a mixed economy, and those advocating a return to the status quo ante.

In March 1963 there was another Ba?thist military coup by a group of officers led by Salah Jadid and Hafiz al-Asad. Under this regime, the Ba?thist government pursued socialist reforms at home and opposed conservative Arab governments abroad. Jadid became the regime's leader in 1966, after three years of internal struggles. He confronted Israel over its Jordan River diversion project of the early 1960s, as well as Israel's escalating attacks on Syria's borders, which had been demilitarized under the armistice agreement of 1949. Jadid gave his support to the Palestinian guerrilla resistance groups that had begun to emerge, including al-Fatah and the Palestine Liberation Army (PLA). These activities were critical in igniting the Arab-Israel War (1967). After the war, Jadid's government established a Ba?thist Palestinian group, al-Sa?iqa, while continuing to assist the others. The failure of the Arab armies, and particularly the Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights, caused internal dissension within the regime between Jadid's leftist faction and the nationalist faction led by Asad. When Jadid sent troops to assist the Palestinians in Jordan during Black September 1970, Asad, who was defense minister, refused to provide air cover. A power struggle followed, and in November 1970 Asad's faction overthrew Jadid's government and established the regime that remains in place today. It has followed a more conservative policy domestically, in pursuit of political stability, and has been more cautious and pragmatic abroad, while attempting to build Syria into a regional power. In 1972 Asad formed a Ba?thist-led national coalition of nationalist parties. Syria participated in the Arab-Israel War (1973) against Israel, in collaboration with Anwar al-Sadat's Egypt, in an attempt to recover occupied territory, some of which was regained in the disengagement agreement in 1974.

In 1975 Syria and Jordan formed a joint command to coordinate their military and political activities against Israel. In late May 1976, after having attempted for months to mediate a settlement in the Lebanese civil war (1975–1990), Asad sent Syrian troops to intervene, saving the Maronite-dominated government from defeat at the hands of a coalition of leftist Lebanese parties and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). This move was opposed by Egypt and Iraq but supported by Jordan, Israel, France and the United States, and was later ratified by the League of Arab States. The Syrians then held the balance of power in Lebanon except for the south, largely controlled by the PLO (parts of it were known as "Fatahland"), where Israel and Israeli-backed Christian militias continued to attack. The peace offensive by Sadat toward Israel in 1977 drove the Syrians closer to the PLO and away from the government side. Good relations with the PLO did not last after Israel, undeterred by Syria, invaded Lebanon in 1982 and forced the PLO's expulsion. Syrian forces remained involved in the civil war to prevent Lebanon, or a potential breakaway Maronite state, from coming under the control of Israel, and to prevent leftist groups from gaining control and forming an alliance with Iraq. Syria still keeps approximately 25,000 troops in Lebanon.

When Asad intervened in Lebanon on the Christian side, Islamic groups in Syria, led by the Muslim Brotherhood, which were already hostile to the secular-oriented Ba?th and the Alawis who dominated it, began a campaign of violent opposition, including acts of terrorism and assassinations. It lasted several years, surviving brutal repression, until in 1982 Asad sent in the special forces to put an end to a state of virtual rebellion in the cities of Aleppo and Hama. Ambushed in Hama, the army attacked the city with full force, including tanks and artillery. The regime regained control after the killing of an estimated 10–20,000 people (and 1,000 soldiers) and the destruction of much of the city.

After Sadat's trip to Jerusalem in 1977, Syria became a member of the Rejection Front [2]. After the Egyptian–Israeli peace treaty of 1979, Asad worked to make Syria militarily equal to Israel, supplied by the Soviet Union. In the Iran-Iraq War of 1980–1988, Syria supported Iran, cutting the Iraqi oil pipeline running through Syria and receiving oil from Iran in return, as well as financial support from Saudi Arabia. In 1990, during the crisis that led to the Gulf War of 1991, Asad attempted to persuade Saddam Hussein to withdraw his troops from Kuwait; he then joined the anti-Iraq coalition led by the United States, sending troops to Saudi Arabia. In October 1991 Syria agreed to participate in the Madrid Conference on the condition that Israel agree to discuss the Golan Heights in bilateral negotiations afterward. The Israeli-Syrian negotiations of 1994–2000 achieved nothing. In June 2000 Asad died. He was succeeded by his son Bashshar al-Asad, who lifted the state of emergency that had been in effect since 1963 and otherwise liberalized Syrian public life, though he has governed cautiously since. He has been less inclined to interfere in Lebanon and has followed his father's policies of not directly confronting Israel and not offending the United States. Syria maintains good relations with Iran and continues to support the Lebanese Hizbullah, a major Lebanese religious movement/militia/political party, regarded by Washington as a terrorist organization. Since the September 2001 attacks on the United States, Syria has cooperated with Washington on intelligence matters. Syria voted to approve the November 2002 UN Security Council resolution demanding that Iraq meet its obligation to allow continued weapons inspections, but opposed the American war in Iraq in 2003. Syrian relations with Israel have been frozen since the failure of the Oslo Accords II negotiations and the radicalization of Israeli and American policies toward the Palestinians.