Syria

A vivid narration of syrias history.

A great work and great book for the comprehension about Syrian history, not only political aspects, but also the social cleavages and economic apparatus

Das Buch ist gut, aber es behandelt sehr viele Dinge aus der Vergangenheit: Es startet im Osmanischen Reich und der eigentliche Bürgerkrieg ist eher kurz gehalten. Dazu greifft das Buch bekannte Ideen über Syrien auf, die sich bei Picard, Hinnebusch, Perthes, Seurat, Van Damme finden. Es bietet in diesem Sinne keine neue Idee auf, die Erklärung ist eine Zusammenführung bekannter Ideen. Teilweise ist es für den bereits mit Syrien vertrautem Leser langamtmig, teilweise bietet er neue interessante Details auf, etwa als vier Personen Präsident Hafez Assad über den Tod seines Sohnes Basil informierten und dieser dachte, es habe einen Militärputsch gegeben. Wer noch nie ein Buch über Syrien gelesen hat, kann vieles lernen, er kann aber auch bei anderen Autoren fundiertere und detailierte Darstellungen über dieses Land finden.

John McHugo's book focuses on 1920-2015 and provides a clear and concise overview of Syria's history over the period. Syria’s population is about 92% Arab, but it has many religious factions who have not always got along. Syria was part of the Ottoman Empire until 1919 and was under French rule 1920-1946. Since 1970 it has been ruled by the Assad family. McHugo speaks Arabic and first visited Syria in 1974 while studying for a graduate degree in Islamic history in Cairo. He then became a London based lawyer and spent a lot of time in the Middle East.McHugo argues that the actions of the West since 1919 have often destabilized Syria and made it difficult for it ever to become a normal country. The main aim of the Syrians has been to keep the country free of foreign domination. He argues that Syria has no reason to trust the West and that is why it has often allied itself with Moscow. American commentators still believe that the US has a role to play in solving the problems of the Muslim world and countries like Syria, but this book makes it clear that we are no longer seen as honest brokers by the Arabs. The US has always supported Israel and Israel is viewed as a hostile foreign aggressor by the Syrians.McHugo tells us that the Assad regime has been brutal and corrupt and that its security services have even tortured children. Syria has seen a lot of bloodshed, before and during the recent civil war. He suggests that getting rid of Assad would be a good start, but does not support partitioning of the country since this would require ethnic cleansing and would result in more bloodshed. He suggests that for the foreseeable future the country is likely to be run by warlords.The Ottoman Empire was dismantled by the Allies and in 1920 France was handed a Mandate by the League of Nations.to rule the country. Most Syrians did not understand why the French had been sent to rule them. The French were hostile towards Islam. They wanted to eradicate the religion and prevent democracy taking hold. They were brutal and unpopular. McHugo believes that the French made a mess of running the country and did not improve the lives of its people. The French hoped to again rule Syria after WW2, but the Syrians wanted them gone. The French carried out a massacre in 1945 and lost the support of Britain. France was kicked out of the country in 1946 and they abandoned Syria. Syria needed help and guidance with its new democracy but it was on its own.The global Cold War tussle between the US and the USSR turned Syria into a pawn. The Saudis have regularly meddled in the country’s affairs and tried to put their own man in charge in 1955. The US tried to organize a coup to overthrow the Syrian government in 1956 and failed. Syria was democratic until it merged with Egypt in 1958. The Assads were able to take control of the country in 1970 because they had the backing of the army. The Ba’ath party supported the country’s new leader, Hafez al-Assad, and Syria became a one-party state. Hafez ruled until 2000. His son Bashar rules today.Syria is made up of many different religious factions: Sunni Muslims (75%), Christians (10%), Druze (3%), and Alawites (11%). Ba’thism was perceived by the Bush Administration as evil, but Michel Aflaq, its main thinker, was a Christian. The London Times described him in 1959 as “the Ghandi of Arab nationalism.” Ba’thists originally advocated socialism and cared about the poor and complained about the selfishness of the elite. McHugo claims that the various Syrian factions peacefully co-existed at one time. The French practiced divide and rule and introduced sectarianism. The Assad family has continued this practice. The Assads are Alawite, which is a branch of Shi’ism. The Assads have only trusted other Alawites to run the army and the security services. The Assads turned the country into a police state and like the French saw Islamic militancy and democracy as twin threats to their rule.Things started to go wrong for Assad in 2011, when authoritarian rulers were being overthrown during the Arab Spring. The Assads had improved literacy and the number of university graduates. However, unemployment was 65% among those aged under 25. This created a lot of educated young people who were dissatisfied with their lot and wanted change. The Ba’athists still believed in socialism but the government was unable to create enough jobs. Ba’athists had no idea how to run a modern Western style economy. The war in Iraq, and the flood of refugees into Syria created further strains. The Arab Spring was the spark which set things off.The point of no return for the regime started in 2011 when its security services started shooting demonstrators. This quickly escalated into a civil war. McHugo describes the various groups involved in the fighting. Assad is supported by Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah. Syria had supported Iran in its war with Iraq in 1980, much to the dismay of the rest of the Arab world. Hezbollah believes it is fighting against American and Israeli hegemony in the region. The Russians want to show that they are players again on the world scene and can’t be pushed around. McHugo highlights the power struggle between the revolutionary Shi’ism of Iran and the Wahhabism of the Saudis, which began in the 1980s. The US, Saudis, and Qataris all back factions in the conflict. The fighters on the Sunni side defect from one faction to another.McHugo argues that Islam is not well understood in the West. According to McHugo, extremist groups like ISIS and al Qaeda are not Islamic. He believes that honesty, justice and mercy are core Islamic values and indiscriminate violence is not. It is not Islamic to execute Christians who won’t convert to Islam. Neither is killing Shia Muslims because you view them as heretics. McHugo argues that ordinary Syrians have traditionally supported a more moderate form of Islam than the Saudis. He believes that ISIS also contains too many foreign nut jobs to emerge as a credible long-term government in Syria.The book was published in 2015 and there was a popular theory at the time that the regime was working with ISIS to kill off the moderate Muslim groups. If the various Sunni factions are fighting each other that is good for the regime. The antics of ISIS also discredits the whole Sunni opposition to Assad in the eyes of the international community. The regime is probably betting that an ISIS victory won’t be acceptable to the West. Assad seems unable to reconquer the whole country, but McHugo believes he can carry on more-or-less indefinitely, with the help of Russia and Iran. This is a history book and explains how we reached the current situation but does not offer any real solutions. He suggests that only Syrians can stop the fighting but at the moment there is too much foreign meddling to allow that to happen.

A well written and concise history of modern Syria. Easy to read and provides good insight into how the current tragedy in Syria came about.

This book follows just a year after John McHugo’s Concise History of the Arabs which is a great help to anybody trying to understand the historical background to Northern Arabia – the Levant. In this book the author homes in on Syria to explain the background to the current civil war. He starts with Greater Syria – the Ottoman Province and shows how France and Britain took advantage of the Ottoman decline to carve up Syria to suit their own agendas. The Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 led to the artificial divide between Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan. Then later the division of Palestine to create a Jewish state happened in such a chaotic way as to leave decades of misery and distrust and rankles especially in Syria because of the annexation of the Golan Heights in 1967.The French mal-administered Syria – of that there is no doubt. The author shows how decisions made by democratic governments in Paris to suit their own interests undermined all chances of creating any kind of democracy in Syria. The chaos they left behind after World War II paved the way for a dictator to emerge in the form of Hafez Al Assad. John McHugo gives some sympathetic treatment to the modernising of the country that took place under the rule of Hafez – particularly the education reforms, the improvements to the economy and his genuine, but rebuffed, attempts to reach peace with a disinterested Israel. Although a socialist, he did continue the traditional patronage system with his own kind of corruption. He did his best to keep a lid on sectarianism and himself in power by deploying the notorious brutality of the secret police. Steadily his family and their cronies lost touch with the resentment that this was generating across the country. This has left a particularly nasty legacy that undoubtedly did much to provoke the present civil war.Basher Al Assad comes across as a man too young for power and rather out of his depth as he struggles from one crisis to another – not really in control of his own government, but at the same time quite happy to continue the brutal practices of his father’s regime. The author reflects on the current civil war and, although he went to press in April 2014, he accurately predicted the emergence of ISIS as a regional power force. To those who are now suggesting that boundaries should be redrawn to reflect the new realities (separate states for Sunnis, Shias and Kurds etc.), he warns that this could only come about with western interference and that could cause even more problems.Well worth reading – not least by Prime Ministers and Foreign Secretaries before they do any more harm in the Levant!