[Originally published in the Rutland Herald and the Barre Times-Argus]
Syria is a complicated place. Like just about every other modern-day “country” in its region, it has been conquered and reconquered by all the major culprits, Persian, Roman, Greek, Ottoman as well as others.
Since World War II, Syria has evolved much like the other countries in the region. It has survived periods of severe instability and pure repression. In its first 10 years of existence, it went through four constitutional rewrites and 20 separate cabinets.
It suffered through numerous military coups and suffered often under martial law. An emergency law, which effectively ended most of the protections afforded to its citizens by its various constitutions, was declared in l962 and lasted until 2011. In short, throughout its existence, Syria has been the victim of invasion, plotting, coups, instability and chaos.
Like Iraq, Syria is another example of rule by a repressive minority. Syria is roughly 74 percent Sunni, 16 percent Shiite (Alawites) and 10 percent Christian and “others,” including a very few Jews. The Alawites are a mystical minority of Shiite Islam. They came into power with Hafez al-Assad in 1970, which was something of an unwelcome surprise to the three quarters of the population that was Sunni and had held power in Syria for centuries.
The Assad years were anything but rosy for Syrians. His rule was characterized by automatic repression of any opposition. This, of course, was made doubly difficult and doubly repressive by the minority status of the Alawites in Syria. Assad ran a pervasive internal security apparatus comprising thousands of agents, all of whom were reporting primarily on real and imagined dissent.
During the period, he is accused of having been responsible for literally thousands of extrajudicial executions of Syrian citizens. Perhaps the most memorable of these was the Hama massacre in February 1982, when the Syrian army put down a revolt by Sunnis in Hama; it is said that 10,000 to 40,000 Sunni civilians were killed and the city almost completely razed.
In foreign affairs, modern Syria has been involved in the 1948, 1967 and 1973 wars with the Israelis. It has been in the forefront of the opposition to Israeli occupation of Palestine, financing and assisting both Hamas and Hezbollah.
Lebanon, which is considered by Syrian irredentists to be rightfully theirs, has been a constant target for their military and political action. In recent times, during and even after the Lebanese civil war of 1975 to 1990, Syrian troops were invited into Lebanon by partisan factions seeking support from the Assad regime. Particularly sensitive and contentious even today is the popular belief that in more recent years Syrian agents assassinated a pro-Western Lebanese prime minister and several other prominent leaders regarded by Damascus as hostile to Syria’s historic ambitions to control Lebanon.
Now Syria is under new management. Hafez al-Assad’s son, Bashar, has been president of Syria since 2000 when his father died. As Bashar had studied in Great Britain as an ophthalmologist, there were some hopes that Syria might enjoy a less repressive rule under his hand.
That has not proven to be the case. The fact is that he is a minority Alawite working in a government with fellow minority Alawites who are generally resented by the majority Sunnis whom they rule. They have ruled for the past 40 years because they have stuck together and terrorized the majority Sunnis.
There are neighbors who have conflicting stakes in the current Syrian rebellion. For example, anti-American elements like Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, which have been closely allied to and supported by Syria, are finding today that many of their youthful members are sympathetic to the protesters being ruthlessly suppressed by the Assad regime.
The result here is simple and pervasive. The Sunnis who are now in fairly full rebellion against the sitting Syrian government are not going to be handed the reins of power. The Alawites will fight them to the end, if only to save their own lives.
We have no dog in this fight. The Syrians, whether they rid themselves of the Assad government or not, have no history, no experience, no training in anything we Americans would recognize as politically attractive or worth actively supporting.
Direct American intervention of any kind and at any level would simply risk being drawn into another potentially costly and bloody civil war in which vital U.S. national interests are clearly not at stake.
