Inside Syria: The Backstory of Their Civil War and What the World Can Expect (8 page)

Assad and the Baathists proclaimed themselves staunch supporters of the Palestinian cause, but the reality was much more complicated. Compared to other Arab countries, Syria had a more enlightened policy toward Palestinian refugees. After the wars of 1948, 1967, and 1973, successive waves of Palestinians fled to nearby countries. In Lebanon, they were segregated into refugee camps and denied basic citizenship rights. The Syrian government treated them better because they weren't forced into refugee camps. While not allowed to become citizens, the government did allow Palestinians access to education and healthcare. By the time of the 2011 uprising, an estimated 500,000 Palestinians
lived in Syria, which included the original refugees and their descendants.
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But Syrian leaders also sought to control the Palestinian movement by providing political sanctuary, money, and arms. Prior to the 1967 war, Syria backed Yasser Arafat, while Egypt had created a competing group called the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
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After 1967, the Palestinians began to exercise more independence from their Arab government sponsors. The PLO expanded to incorporate all the significant Palestinian groups and elected Arafat as chair.

At that time, Palestinians and the leaders of Arab countries considered Israel illegitimate and favored a one-state solution. Israel would have to allow exiled Palestinians to return to their homes, and both peoples would elect a common government. Israelis rejected this solution out of hand, arguing that Jews would easily be outnumbered by Palestinians and the nature of their country would change—even assuming everyone could get along.

But conditions were changing rapidly for Israel. In 1973 Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Israel, seeking to regain lost territory, but Israel won the war because of strong US support. Arab countries launched an oil embargo against the United States, cut production, and raised prices internationally. The resulting gas shortages and high prices caused serious economic disruption in the West. Egypt signed a peace agreement with Israel in 1979; Jordan did so in 1994. But neither agreement returned the Golan nor provided for an independent Palestinian state.

Syria joined with a few other Arab countries and Palestinian groups to reject such agreements with Israel. Assad promoted Syria as leader of this “rejection front.” Leaders in Syria, Saddam Hussein's Iraq, and the new revolutionary government in Iran gave fiery speeches against Israel but did little to actually help the Palestinians. In fact, Assad tried to manipulate the Palestinian movement.

In 1982 a top PLO commander, Said Musa Maragha, broke with Arafat. Maragha, better known as Abu Musa, was born in Palestine. He had joined, and later defected from, the Jordanian Army. He became
the PLO's top commander in Lebanon, fighting on the side of the leftist and Muslim forces in that country's civil war (1975–1990). Israel had invaded Lebanon in an effort to crush the PLO, but a compromise allowed Yasser Arafat and other leaders to depart for Tunisia where they could reconstitute the group. Maragha declared that the PLO should continue the fight against Israel, not escape to Tunis. He couldn't back up his militant rhetoric, however, and later fled to Damascus.

Hafez al-Assad hoped to use Maragha to establish a pro-Syrian Palestinian coalition. He encouraged Maragha to form a new group, the “Fatah Uprising,” to challenge Arafat's leadership of the PLO. Syria used its full propaganda machinery to bolster the image of Maragha while disparaging Arafat, but to no avail. Maragha's group never developed a popular base and he died in obscurity in Damascus in 2013.
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Syria would later use similar tactics to back such disparate groups as ultraleftists and Islamist Palestinians who opposed the PLO. The ultraleft groups established headquarters in Damascus, issued press releases, and did little to help the Palestinian cause. Assad, while portraying himself as a staunch supporter of the Palestinians and a fighter against US imperialism, in practice, was always best at supporting himself. Nowhere was that more clear than in Syria's military intervention in Lebanon.

Lebanon had prospered through the mid-1970s with Beirut becoming a financial capital known as the “Paris of the Middle East.” But the prosperity of the elite masked deep social inequalities, further complicated by the country's patchwork governing system that allocated power based on religion and ethnicity.

The Lebanese Civil War began in 1975 for a number of reasons, including the large presence of the PLO in the country and the conflict between Muslims and Christians. It pitted the country's poor and underrepresented Muslims against wealthy Maronite Christians, an ancient Christian sect affiliated with the Church of Rome. The French had favored a Maronite elite during colonial times. Distribution of political and economic power hadn't changed a lot since.

Conservative Maronites dominated the government under terms of a 1943 agreement that led to the country's independence. The Muslim population had grown tremendously since then, yet Maronites still held 40 percent of the best jobs—Sunni Muslims held 27 percent and Shia Muslims 3.3 percent. In its early stages, the civil war pitted leftist Muslim groups against right-wing Christian parties.

The PLO had made its headquarters in Beirut and eventually joined the fighting on the leftist side. In 1975 and 1976, horrific war raged among the factions, and Beirut was split into Christian and Muslim areas. The Arab League, which by then included all the major Arab countries, authorized Syria to send peacekeeping troops to Lebanon to quell the fighting. Syrian troops arrived in 1976 and initially sided with the conservative Christians. Assad later shifted allegiance to the leftist side and allied with Shia, Sunni, and Alawite militias. Many Lebanese initially supported the intervention because it significantly reduced the violence. At its height, Syria had forty thousand troops in Lebanon, along with thousands of intelligence agents. It controlled the country politically and militarily. Major roads had checkpoints manned by Syrians in plain clothes and carrying AK-47s. Cronies of the Syrian military made millions of dollars in corrupt government contracts and shady banking deals.

Israel was highly displeased with the Syrian presence in Lebanon and the growing power of the PLO. As a preemptive move, Israel invaded Lebanon in 1978. Then it invaded again in 1982, claiming on both occasions that its action was a limited incursion to stop the PLO from firing missiles into Israel. But in 1982 it quickly sent troops northward to Beirut and sanctioned the massacre of civilians in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila.
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Israel destroyed an estimated five hundred Syrian tanks and one hundred planes.
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The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) occupied part of southern Lebanon. The 1982 invasion appeared to be a major Israeli and US victory, but it failed to accomplish the major Israeli goals of driving Syria out of Lebanon and destroying the PLO. In fact, the war laid the seeds of future defeat.

Anger at the invasion led to the formation of Hezbollah, a Shia insurgent group closely allied with Iran and Syria. The United States
holds Hezbollah responsible for the 1983 bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut, which killed 241 servicemen. A separate bombing the same day killed fifty-eight French paratroopers. Those attacks forced the withdrawal of US and French troops from Lebanon. Hezbollah went on to wage a guerrilla war against Israeli occupation and forced the IDF out of southern Lebanon in 2000, the first Arab armed group to defeat Israel.

The sectarian strife in Lebanon was also bubbling in Syria. The Baathists tried to run a secular dictatorship. In Syria's big cities, Syrians seemingly lived without outward reference to religious differences. Sunni, Shia, Christian, and Alawite had friendships and did business. Assad's family was Alawite, a Muslim sect that had suffered poverty and discrimination under previous regimes. Alawites practiced a less-strict interpretation of Islam, and many became secular.

Before Syria's 2011 civil war, about 74 percent of Syrians were Sunni Muslim, 10 percent were Christian, and 16 percent Alawite and Druze.
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But beneath the surface, religion and ethnicity did matter. Kurds in the north consider themselves Syrians, but not Arab, and make up about 10 percent of the population, and they suffer greatly (see
chapter 9
). Alawites enjoy the top positions in the army and intelligence services. Sunni Muslims are underrepresented in government jobs, which breeds resentment.

In the 1980s, the Muslim Brotherhood took advantage of that resentment, grew in influence, and eventually posed a major threat to the Baathists. The brotherhood gained support by providing food and social services to the poor. But their leadership and strongest support came from urban, Sunni traders. They hated Alawites for religious reasons, claiming they were not real Muslims, but also for class reasons. The apostate Alawites ruled, and the Sunnis didn't.
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As its influence grew in conservative parts of Aleppo, Hama, and other cities, the brotherhood also split into different factions. Younger militants began to advocate armed struggle and opposed the traditional leaders' reliance on peaceful tactics. Damascus was the bastion of traditional
views while Aleppo and Hama favored militancy. The pro-armed-struggle wing also became increasingly conservative politically, rejecting Arab socialism. A leading brotherhood cleric called for jihad against leftists, Shiites, and Sufis. Sufism is an approach to Islam that can include worship through meditation, music, and dance. The Muslim Brotherhood, on the other hand, encouraged followers not to watch TV or listen to music. Even tambourines were considered un-Islamic.
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In 1979 Islamic extremists carried out an attack on the Aleppo Artillery School, killing eighty-three Alawite cadets and wounding scores. The government blamed Muslim Brotherhood leaders. But the brotherhood said the attack was launched by a splinter group called the Fighting Vanguard. The Baathist government took full advantage of the popular revulsion against the attack, however, and started a massive propaganda campaign against the brotherhood. While the insurgents claimed a victory against the Baathist military, many Syrians saw it as an attack on Alawites. The incident foreshadowed how the government and armed rebels would portray religious/ethnic issues after 2011.

After the artillery school attack, many older brotherhood leaders fled the country or went underground, leaving the younger members to make decisions. The young militants stockpiled arms, and the violence increased. In 1980, the brotherhood sponsored a general strike in several cities, and there was an assassination attempt on Hafez al-Assad. The Syrian government retaliated by killing over six hundred political prisoners in Tadmur Prison, many of them brotherhood members and supporters. But even this horrific violence was but a prelude.

In 1982, a general uprising broke out in the city of Hama. The brotherhood's younger militants held sway. Young men with full beards and wearing Muslim skullcaps set up barricades around the city. From speakers atop minarets, imams urged insurrection.

Brotherhood militants killed Baathist officials in their homes. In essence, the brotherhood posed the political question: Do you support the secular dictatorship or ultraconservative Islamic rule? The answer came quickly. Assad ordered army troops into Hama, gave residents a few hours to evacuate, and then shelled the civilian areas suspected of
supporting the brotherhood. He eventually sent twelve thousand troops, and the fighting lasted twenty-seven days. While exact figures may never be known, the army may have killed over ten thousand people.
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The brotherhood had badly miscalculated their level of popular support. Other cities failed to join the rebellion. Syrians were not ready to rise up against Assad, and they rejected the brotherhood's ultraconservatism. The Baathists gloated in their brutal victory. Rifat al-Assad, brother of Hafez, was commander of the paramilitary defense forces at the time. He told British newspaper journalist Robert Fisk, “You in the West should be grateful to us. We crushed Islamic fanaticism here.”
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After the 1982 defeat, the remaining brotherhood leaders were either jailed or exiled. It would be decades before they recovered a popular base of support. While Hafez al-Assad appeared secure at home, international events were once again going to intervene.

In 1990, Saddam Hussein's Iraq invaded and occupied Kuwait. The United States mobilized an alliance of Western Europeans and some Arab states to expel Hussein's troops. Officially, the United States invaded in order to liberate Kuwait and protect Saudi Arabia from a future invasion. The United States actually hoped to overthrow Saddam Hussein and bring a pro-US strongman to power. With that goal in mind, President George H. W. Bush gave a February 1991 speech calling on Iraqis to rise up against Hussein.
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The Soviet Union, which in the past would have blocked such efforts, was suffering from internal turmoil that would soon lead to its political collapse. Syria could see the handwriting on the Kuwaiti wall. Assad had no love for Hussein, having supported Iran during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. So, in 1991, Assad switched sides. He joined the Gulf War coalition and sent 14,500 troops to participate in Operation Desert Storm against Iraq.

Always the clever operator, Assad also switched positions on Palestine to curry favor with the West. In 1991 the United States, Israel, Syria, and others met in Madrid to discuss a peace plan that would
eventually be known as the Oslo Agreement. Oslo called for creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and Arab recognition of Israel. Syria and Israel held serious negotiations about the return of the Golan. Assad had rejected his own rejection front; Syria came to accept the two-state solution.

The talks concerning the return of the Golan eventually failed, as did the Oslo process. But Assad's participation took the international spotlight off Syria's role in Lebanon and his repression at home.