Syria's Complex Carnage

Henry Srebrnik, [Halifax, NS] Chronicle Herald

The killings in Syria go on, despite efforts to end the carnage. The country’s largest city, Aleppo, lies in ruins. Millions have fled the country.

What makes this such an intractable problem? Well, Syria is a very complex country, a kaleidoscope of rival ethnicities and sects.

If history is a guide, this is a state that has only been held together by force, and when those that exercise it falter, near-anarchy ensues.

About 90 per cent of Syrians are Arabs, most being Sunnis. They are the dominant cultural group.

The Alawites, a Shi’ite sect, constitute just eight per cent of the population, centred in the coastal province of Latakia. They have played a role in politics and the army that far outweighs their numbers. There are other minor sects of Shi’ites, such as Ismailis.

The Druz, about three per cent of the population, live in southwestern Syria -- Jebal Druze, the Golan and in Damascus.

The non-Arab Kurds, some nine per cent, inhabit the mountain areas near Turkey, in the self-governing region of Rojava. Kurdish nationalists first, Muslims second, and Syrians last, they want an independent state that would merge with the Kurds of eastern Turkey and northern Iraq.

There are also 100,000 Turkomens, Sunnis who speak a Turkic language from central Asia. They live in eastern Syria. The Circassians, who are also Sunnis, fled the Caucasus when the Russians conquered it; they were offered asylum by the Ottomans.

Christian Arabs comprise 10 per cent of Syrians. Eastern Orthodox Christians are divided between Jacobites and Greek Orthodox. Catholics include Melkites and Maronites, as well as followers of the Latin rite.

Then there are Assyrian Nestorians, and various small groups of Protestants, who were successfully converted by 19th-century Europeans.

Non-Arab Armenians, at three per cent, mostly arrived in the early 20th century, fleeing the Turks. Most are Armenian Orthodox. Merchants and craftsmen, they settled mainly in Aleppo and Damascus and have resisted assimilation.

Given this polyglot mix, in the past most Syrians tried to rise above their particular group. Pan-Arabism, Syrian nationalism, socialism -- all have been put forth to form a wider identity. This seems no longer the case.

While Syrians supported the Wilsonian ideals of national self-determination propagated during World War I, the French and British had secretly agreed to divide up the Middle East.

Syria and Lebanon went to the French, who encouraged minorities such as the Alawites and Circassians to join the military.

In 1943, the French granted independence to Syria. Political power now rested in the hands of traditional Sunni leaders; they came from landholding or mercantile families.

But a new element emerged on the scene: the Arab Socialist Renaissance (Ba’ath) Party.

Its program of Arab unity, anti-imperialism, social reform and economic justice appealed to a wide spectrum of the lower classes. Given Syria’s complex social order, the Ba’ath attempted to transcend, indeed, wish away, these divisions.

A bloody coup in 1966 brought to power radical Alawite officers. The new regime intensified nationalization measures, and increased ties with the Soviet Union.  In May 1969, a new constitution made the Ba’ath the only legal party.

In 1970, Hafez al-Assad assumed sole power. He and his son Bashar, who took over in 2000 after his father’s death, have ruled the country ever since.

In “Democratization Theory and the ‘Arab Spring,’” an article published in 2013 in the Journal of Democracy, the eminent political scientists Alfred Stepan and Juan Linz describe the extreme case of personal rule known as “sultanism,” when domination by a family or individual develops an administration and a military force “which are purely personal instruments of the master.”

This means that there is no autonomy of state careers. All officials are best seen as being on the “household staff” of the sultan.

Syria under Bashar al-Assad clearly has strong sultanistic features, such as the “dynastic” element. He “inherited” the presidency from his father even though he had been working in England as an ophthalmologist.

Assad has no important official in whom he does not have full personal trust, which means that nearly all must come from his own Alawite religious minority. This has left the majority Sunnis in the cold, and they are now pushing back.

Stepan and Linz conclude, sadly, that “We know of no situations where a long, complicated, and brutal civil war has led to a cohesive state and a rapidly emerging democracy.”