The war in Syria is so complex, broad and long-lasting that it is difficult to even establish when it starts and ends. It is also difficult to define precisely which countries actively participated in this war, for which side and what are their real intentions. In order to understand what is happening in one of the most influential countries of the Middle East, we need to go back in time.
At least to the beginning of Syria’s colonization by France. In the year of 1920, Syria was taken over by France. The entire Middle East was being redesigned in accordance with the interests of European powers.
And France, as one of the winners of World War I, took Syria under its rule in that year. Before that, Syria belonged to the vast Ottoman Empire. With the disintegration provoked by the Great War, Syria became the largest chunk of this broken down empire, and was under France’s rule for 25 years.
The situation only changed after World War II, in 1945. The France’s situation during the World War II was very peculiar. Part of the French population engaged in the so called French Resistance to Nazi occupation.
This portion was encouraged by an prominent Frenchman in exile, the army officer De Gaulle. But another part of France surrendered and accepted the Nazi occupation of Paris. It was known as Vichy France, lead by General Petain.
This division caused post-war France to end up simultaneously victorious and embarrassed. As one of the results of this public shame Vichy France pulled out of its rule over foreign countries, such as Syria. The World War II ended in 1945.
In that same year, Syria became a member of the newly founded United Nations. And the next year, 1946, the last French troops were finally withdrawn. Other middle eastern countries were going through the same independence process.
All of them were trying to validate their identity and define their own path. This search was followed by internal disputes, coups and countercoups. In Syria’s case, the turbulent independence process only reached a certain balance after 1963, when the Ba’ath Party came to power.
Understanding ba’athism is one way of understanding a considerable part of the contemporary history of the Middle East. Ba’athism is a political movement that advocated for Arab nationalism, rejecting the interference of foreign powers in the region, and defending socialism. Ba’ath named leaders in two countries: in Syria, Hafez al-Assad, father of the current president, Bashar al-Assad.
And in Iraq, Saddam Hussein. In neighboring Iraq, the ba’athist Saddam Hussein was overthrown, convicted and hanged in December 2006, after 34 years in power. The case of Syria was different.
The Assad family has been in power for nearly 50 years. Hafez al-Assad took power in 1971 and ruled Syria with an iron fist until the year 2000. He was then succeeded by his son Bashar al-Assad, who won a fraudulent election and had no opponent, clearing the way for him to stay in power until today.
As a general rule, the US and European powers not only tolerated despotic leaders all over the Middle East, but also protected, supported and provided weapons to them for decades. That happened with Saddam Hussein in Iraq, with Hafez and Bashar al-Assad in Syria and also with Muamar Kadafi in Libya. These secular leaders — non-religious, were seen as a moderate possibility in comparison to religious leaders like the ayatollahs who took power in 1979 in Iran.
But it didn’t go like that. Involved in massive internal massacres, these leaders became toxic company to the West, which sought more oil but fewer problems in the region. Saddam was executed in 2006.
Kadafi was killed in 2011. And in 2006 Assad was close to his end. In that year, a series of protests took down authoritarian presidents and led to regime change in countries in the Middle East and North Africa.
The wave of protests became known as the Arab Spring. Spring winds changed the governments of Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Bahrain, and extracted important economic concessions in more than ten other countries. But the wave failed to hit Syria, triggering the war that unfolded then.
The violence started when Assad, whose family had been in power for 40 years, repressed the demonstrations demanding political change in the country. The Syrian president looked around and feared suffering the same fate as the leaders of Egypt and Yemen, who wound up deposed. Or even worse: Assad feared getting killed, like Saddam Hussein in Iraq or Muamar Kadafi in Libya.
Thus, he intensified repression. There aren’t precise records, but the 2016 UN report, based on data from 2014, estimated 400 thousand deaths. As in many conflicts in the Middle East, religion plays an important role.
But in a different way. Assad is Alawite, an offshoot of Shia Islam. His wife, Asma, is Sunni.
The couple was educated in Europe. Both are influenced by cosmopolitan culture and never made religion a first order issue. Hafez, Assad’s father, even removed the constitutional clause that every Syrian president had to be muslim.
For the Assad family it was more important to keep government secular rather than religious. This is an important point in understanding the war: Assad presents himself to the West as a secular moderate leader who resists pressure by islamic fundamentalists. The same fundamentalists who scare the whole world with terrorism.
One argument used to repress the demonstrators of 2011 and to start a war against his opponents was putting them all under the same umbrella, referred to as islamic fundamentalism. He labeled himself the only one capable of defeating them. It was as if Assad had said: it’s either me or them.
Intellectuals, journalists, artists and students who had criticized Assad started fleeing the country willingly. Gradually, social protest became a field for those who were apt and inclined to clash with governmental forces on a physical level. So in 2012, the overt phase of a civil war begun.
In the following year, 2013, Assad was accused of a chemical attack using Sarin gas in the outskirts of Damascus. Barack Obama, then president of the U. S.
, warned Assad, saying that the use of chemical weapons was crossing a ‘red line’. The speech suggested a threat of U. S.
military intervention — but it didn’t happen. At least not that year. Also in 2013, the movement that would become ISIS, still limited to neighboring Iraq, saw the opportunity to expand their international actions by crossing the border into Syria.
This strategy was facilitated by the fact that the government had lost control over vast stretches of its territory. Having crossed Syria’s border, ISIS started to grow, internationalize and gain strength, by taking oil wells, increasing revenues and recruiting more and more members. In Syria — and also in Iraq, ISIS destroyed some of the most precious ruins of the most precious ancient sites.
Some over 3,000 years old. The invasion of Syria by ISIS and its extreme violence, broadcasted widely — decapitations and other brutal executions — led the Americans and Russians to officially enter the war. The Americans formed a coalition with at least six countries.
Besides providing guns, information and training to the rebels, from 2014 on they also participated actively in large scale military operations, aiming mostly at eliminating ISIS targets. In the following year, 2015, the Russians went in the same direction. Supported by Iran, they started bombarding ISIS territory.
But it didn’t stop there. Russia bombarded rebel groups at the same time, protecting Assad’s government. Iran is ruled by a theocratic Shia regime, financed by Hezbollah in Lebanon, which also supported Assad, widening its geopolitical influence in the Middle East.
Nexo has a video about Iran’s history and its role in the region. It’s worth a watch. Amidst all this, the conflict in Syria began to operate by Cold War logic, with Russian and the U.
S. measuring strength through local players. The internationalization of the Syrian conflict led to one of the worst humanitarian tragedies in the world.
Over 5 million Syrians have fled the country since the conflict started. Of those who remained, 13 million depend on humanitarian aid for survival. The surrounding countries — especially Lebanon and Turkey — received half of the Syrians refugees who fled the war.
But it was in Europe that the migration crisis caused a major political impact, fueling a far-right nationalist movement that roundly rejected immigration in general. 2017 saw many decisive defeats for ISIS in Syria and Iraq. In that year, a heterogeneous combination of forces proclaimed victory over the terrorists in the cities of Raqqa, Syria and Mosul, Iraq.
The combination of forces encompassed Iraqis, Turks, Americans, Syrian rebels, Sunnis and Shiites. But it had the fundamental participation of one particular group: the Kurds — an ethnic group that claims the right to their own state in a region that includes parts of Syria, Iraq and Turkey. Struggling to survive as a nation, Kurds formed unorthodox alliances, playing a very important role in the Syrian war, but the recognition they hoped for in return is still uncertain.
In 2019, the U. S. finally announced the removal of their troops from Syria, though on an erratic schedule.
In one way or another, everybody proclaimed victory: Assad for having remained in power, the Russians and Iraqis for having supported the Syrian president, the Americans, Europeans, Kurds and Turks for quelling ISIS. Civilians suffered the major consequences, victims of one of the largest humanitarian crises in the world. And Syrian rebels, who failed to bring down Assad via protest or force.
