Inside Syria: The Backstory of Their Civil War and What the World Can Expect

by Reese Erlich

  King was sensitive to the views of Protestant missionaries who were lobbying hard for greater US involvement in the Middle East. Missionaries had established American schools, churches, and hospitals with the aim of finding new converts to Christianity. The missionaries wanted to expand their presence but needed more active US government participation in the region.

  Charles R. Crane, also born in 1858, was a wealthy industrialist and heir to the Crane plumbing fortune (think Crane toilets). Crane had developed a great interest in international affairs. He had been appointed US envoy to China in 1909 and participated in a US delegation to the new, revolutionary Soviet Union in 1917. Crane was also an anti-Jewish bigot who later wrote favorably about Hitler's policy toward the Jews.10 In the 1930s Crane helped finance the first oil exploration in Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

  Back in 1919, when the King-Crane Commission was appointed, Crane represented the kind of activist businessman who advocated that international policy decisions should be driven by the corporate profit motive. King, Crane, and a group of advisors set out for a long journey through the Middle East in the summer of 1919. They traveled by boat to Jaffa (now incorporated into Tel Aviv) and then by car over the rutted roads of the Arab lands.

  Commission members conducted interviews in thirty-six towns and cities in what is today Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, and Palestine. People in each region submitted a total of 1,863 petitions listing their demands, and the commission staff conducted in-person, follow-up interviews. It wasn't a scientific survey because the commission couldn't get proportionate responses from the region's various groups. The commission acknowledged, for example, that opinions of Sunni Muslims were underrepresented.11 In addition, many of the petitions were suspiciously similar, indicating an organized effort to affect the data.

  Given the lack of other broad-based exploration of local views, however, the commission produced an interesting snapshot of public opinion. The survey reflected the depth of opposition to any colonial rule in the region.

  Seventy-three percent of the people favored “absolute independence” for Syria and Iraq. When forced to choose among colonial powers that might “assist” them until independence, 60 percent chose the United States and 55 percent chose Britain. In a fascinating footnote, the commission admitted, “The high figures given for American and British assistance…are because the people ask first for complete independence.”12

  Seventy-two percent opposed the creation of a Zionist state in Palestine. The report noted that Zionist leaders, far from planning to live in peace with the Arabs, planned to dispossess the Arabs through land purchases and Jewish immigration: “If the American government decided to support the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, they are committing the American people to the use of force in that area, since only by force can a Jewish state in Palestine be established or maintained.”

  Despite the overwhelming Arab desire for independence, the commission accepted the colonial myth that the Arabs were not ready for self-governance and needed assistance from an outside power. It then humbly suggested that the United States provide that assistance not only to the Arab Middle East but to the defeated nation of Turkey as well. The commission report stated that the United States has a “special fitness…for the particular task in hand—a fitness growing naturally out of her experience as a great growing democracy, largely freed hitherto from European entanglements.”13

  Not surprisingly, neither the European colonial powers nor the Arabs accepted this American “special fitness.” The report was highly controversial, and it wasn't made public until 1922. The commission's report, while never considered an important document, reflected part of the upheaval in US ruling circles at the time over how best to expand the US empire.

  The United States had only seriously entered the empire game in 1898 with its colonization of Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines. Some leaders wanted to expand US domination to the Middle East. But in 1919 the United States lacked the military, economic, and political heft to establish additional direct colonies. American interests in the region included access to oil for US corporations, freedom for Protestant missionaries to operate in the region, and maintenance of US institutions such as hospitals and schools.

  In words, President Wilson supported “self-determination” for the Middle East. In reality, the United States sought to extend its domination by establishing nominally independent client states under US control, a model it used in Latin America. For example, Wilson favored an independent Syria under the rule of King Faisal, who was pro-Britain and pro–United States.

  But other powerful Americans argued for a different imperialist policy. Henry Cabot Lodge, a conservative Republican and chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, became one of Wilson's most famous opponents. Lodge had supported the Spanish-American War and World War I. But he strongly opposed the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations, arguing that they would allow European powers too much influence and limit the United States’ ability to pursue its own interests.

  Cabot formed an alliance with isolationist senators who opposed any US intervention in the Middle East or elsewhere. As a result, the United States focused less on Europe and the Middle East and more on the Western Hemisphere. In November 1919, the US Senate voted against joining the League of Nations. The Senate never ratified the Treaty of Versailles. By then the British and French had permanently installed their troops in the Middle East. That combination of domestic and international events relegated the United States to a secondary role in the region until after World War II.

  At the end of World War I, while imperial powers feuded among themselves, Arabs were busy exercising their independence. The General Syrian Congress elected Emir Faisal king of the Arab nation with its headquarters in Damascus. The Arabs had governed their newly liberated land—but by 1919 the colonial powers were ready to divvy up the colonial spoils. The results were bloody indeed.

  On November 21, 1919, French general Henri Gouraud landed in Beirut as head of the French Army of the Levant. He had already become famous in 1894 for putting down an anticolonial uprising in French Sudan. He lost an arm fighting in World War I. He wore a crisp uniform and Van Dyke beard and mustache. General Gouraud quickly set about conquering inland Syria, extending French colonial rule. It wasn't easy. Faisal's government controlled Syria and part of Lebanon while Britain controlled Iraq, Jordan, and Palestine. In early 1920, the British decided to pull back their troops, conceding the eventual control of Damascus and Lebanon to France.

  Faisal hoped to cut a deal with French prime minister Georges Clemenceau to keep himself in power, but Syrian nationalists opposed him. Faisal's government prohibited the French military from using rail lines in Aleppo and other regions under his control. Anti-French nationalists blew up other rail lines. The anticolonial war was on.

  The Arab forces were weak politically, economically, and militarily. They lacked a stable source of income and fought without heavy weapons. On July 25, 1920, French troops entered Damascus. Faisal fled to Palestine, then controlled by the British. General Gouraud installed himself as the military and political leader of the French mandate. But first, with colonial swagger, he entered the old city of Damascus to visit the tomb of the Arab leader who had driven out the Crusaders.

  “Saladin, we're back,” he said.14

  Faisal's forces were defeated because of the overwhelming French military superiority but also because Arab nationalism was still in its infancy. Many Arabs identified with their tribe, ethnic group, or region more than with their newly emerging nation states. Various ideologies competed for support on the Arab street. Pan-Arabists called for a single Arab nation made up of people from throughout the region. A few Islamists called for a unified Muslim emirate, and still other nationalists wanted to build independent countries.

  Arabs included people from the Arabian peninsula, Palestine, Mount Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and North Africa, and they often fought among themselves. “They were very
disunited,” political scientist Elie El-Hindy told me in an interview. “The people of the Near East, they had so many diverging opinions about who they were and what was their nationalism.”15

  France and Britain took advantage of the disunity. Both powers “did not care what people thought,” said El-Hindy. “They did not care about the best interest of these people. They simply cared about their division. They applied it by force. They [the French] had to bomb Damascus to make Faisal move out.”

  By 1920, the colonial powers had seemingly resolved their differences over how to divvy up the Middle East. On August 10, they signed the Treaty of Sevres, which allocated Lebanon and Syria to France and the rest of the Arab areas to Britain. France was also given control over Hatay Province in what is today southwestern Turkey, along the Syrian border.

  But Turkish military officers under Mustafa Kemal Ataturk rejected the Treaty of Sevres on the grounds that it gave too much land to the colonial powers. Ataturk led a military campaign that took back territory and established the Republic of Turkey.

  The Treaty of Lausanne, which took effect August 6, 1924, replaced the previous treaty and established most of the borders of modern Turkey. Turkey officially gave up territorial claims to the Arab Middle East, which, in any case, had already been seized by Britain and France. Hatay Province remained part of the French mandate of Syria and Lebanon. In 1938, residents of Hatay separated from Syria and then joined Turkey in 1939. Hatay has long-standing cultural, linguistic, and economic ties to Syria. So the split-off was controversial.

  “Hatay was stolen by the Turks,” Mudar Barakat told me in a Damascus interview.16 As an economist and a government advisor, he reflects the common view among Syrians on this issue. “The Turks disenfranchised the Christians and Alawites and replaced them with people from Turkey.”

  Succeeding Syrian governments have claimed Hatay as part of Syria. Official Syrian maps don't recognize the de facto border. The border dispute remains an irritant between modern-day Turkey and Syria.

  During all these conferences and treaty signings, the colonial powers never allowed local people to decide their own fate. The results became strikingly clear when the French tried to govern Syria and Lebanon.

  Soon after marching their troops into Damascus, the French faced the problem of how to keep themselves in power. General Gouraud's secretary, Robert de Caix, wrote that France had two choices. It could “build a Syrian nation [state] which does not yet exist.” Or it could “cultivate and maintain all the phenomena…that these divisions give. I must say that only the second option interests me.”17 In short, the French chose to divide and rule.

  French officials carved up the old Ottoman territory with the aim of exacerbating ethnic and religious tensions. France demarcated separate administrative regions named State of Greater Lebanon, Aleppo, Damascus, State of the Alawites, and State of the Druze. Greater Lebanon included many Maronite Christians, whom the French favored. The French discriminated against the Muslims, Alawites, and Druze, thus maintaining a cheap labor force while sowing religious division.

  Syrians were never happy with the new colonial occupiers. France boasted of bringing civilization to Syria in the form of new railroad lines and roads. But peasant farmers were forced to build the roads for no pay.18 The French administrators were notoriously corrupt, expecting bribes to carry out even minor government tasks.

  A new group of nationalists emerged in Syria during and after World War I. They didn't come from the traditional wealthy clans like King Faisal and his brothers. They arose from among the petit bourgeoisie, the merchants, the well-to-do farmers, and the Arabs who served in the Turkish Army. The man who would become known as Sultan Pasha al-Atrash was one such army veteran.

  Sultan al-Atrash cut a dashing figure sitting astride a white stallion. He wore a traditional robe and a tightly wound keffiyeh, and he sported a large, tapered mustache favored by Arab sheiks and Ottoman bureaucrats. In a photo, Atrash stood in front of his rebel army with banners and flags raised high. In 1925 he became one of the top leaders of a massive Syrian revolt against French rule.

  Atrash was born in 1891, the son of a local sheik, or village headman, and grew up in a rural Druze community. He was conscripted into the Ottoman army at the age of twenty, where he learned to read and write. The army, and its military academies in particular, offered opportunities for village Arabs to gain a formal education. Some Arab officers were exposed to the nationalist thinking being spread by fellow students at the academies. One day, Atrash came home to find that Turks had hung his father and four other sheiks for antigovernment activities. Atrash became a committed revolutionist.

  Atrash fought alongside T. E. Lawrence and Auda abu Tayi during the World War I Arab revolt. He helped liberate Damascus from the Turks in 1918. In recognition for his military prowess, Emir Faisal made Atrash a Pasha, an honorific denoting high military rank. But Atrash clashed with Lawrence and Tayi and was sent home to the Jabal Druze area, what is the Golan today. The Druze are an ethnic group that practice their own form of Islam that dates back to the tenth century. They lived in isolated, mountainous regions of what is now Lebanon and Syria's Golan. They earned a justified reputation as fierce fighters.

  The 1925 revolt started in Druze villages but quickly spread to all parts of the country. It ultimately included at least some fighters from all of Syria's religious and ethnic groups, reflecting a nascent Syrian nationalism. The uprising bears a striking political similarity to the early days of the 2011 Arab Spring when young people rebelled against the established regime and defied their elders. In both cases, the country's economic elite sided with the governing authorities. And the government tried to divide the insurgents while brutally suppressing them with the most modern weapons available.

  The 1925 anticolonial rebellion began when the Druze in one village held a demonstration that led to an exchange of gunfire with French authorities. Atrash, leading a group of armed men on horseback, forced the French gendarmes to retreat.

  Atrash soon issued a statement demanding an end of colonial rule and “to liberate the homeland from the foreigner.”19 At the time, France had only seven thousand troops in Syria, so rebels met little initial resistance. They seized a series of towns and villages by riding into the central square, calling for the end of French rule and recruiting followers on the spot.

  On July 22, Bedouin and Druze rebels attacked a French military camp in Suwayda and wiped it out in a thirty-minute battle. Almost no French troops survived.

  The rebels sought support in the big cities as well. They distributed leaflets in Damascus with the headline, “To Arms Syrians!” It began, “At last the day has come when we can reap the harvest of our struggle for liberty and independence…Let us seek death so that we win life.”20

  Sultan al-Atrash sought support among all religious and ethnic groups, saying they were all sons of the Arab nation. He sent letters to Christian and Muslim villages, calling for solidarity against the French. The revolt also got support from leftists in France. The Communist Party mailed prorebellion letters to thousands of Syrians and Lebanese using the French postal system.

  While the rebels’ nationalism was pragmatic, it lacked ideological consistency. As historian Michael Provence wrote in The Great Syrian Revolt and the Rise of Arab Nationalism, “They focused on expelling the French from Syria and sometimes mixed in popular Islamic religion, anti-Christian agitation and…class warfare against urban landlords and notables.”21

  The French government claimed the revolt was led by Druze feudal chiefs trying to reinforce reactionary customs. The French, by contrast, were bringing progress through modern infrastructure and French education. They denounced the rebels as backward and anti-Christian.

  In fact, the rebels had support far beyond the Druze community. But the revolt became complicated because many Christians did side with the French and were therefore attacked by the rebels. Some Syrians also saw the revolt as benefiting only Druze because they would have a
disproportionate share of power. The ruling authorities played Sunni, Shia, Alawite, and Christian against one another to maintain power. And the fragmented rebels lacked a common plan for the future beyond eliminating French rule.

  Interestingly enough, some of the same cities that strongly backed rebels in 1925 did so again in 2011. Maydan, a southern suburb of Damascus, was a hotbed of rebellion in both uprisings. Hama was a conservative, deeply religious city in 1925 when it backed the rebels and strongly supported the rebels again in 2011.

  The events of 1925 were well known to the rebels of 2011. “They were both popular rebellions,” said Bisher Allisa, an exiled leader of the Syrian Non Violent Movement. “Assad used the same strategy as the French to manipulate religious groups.”22

  After initial successes in rural areas and smaller cities, the 1925 rebels faced a massive influx of French troops armed with the most modern weapons at the time: heavy machine guns, artillery, and airplanes. The rebels successfully seized Damascus. But the French mercilessly bombed the city by air, one of the first such attacks on civilians in history.

  By the spring of 1927 the rebels were defeated and Atrash fled to Jordan. He returned home in 1937 after being pardoned by the French. He received a massive hero's welcome. Atrash again fought for Syrian independence in 1946, remaining a secular pan-Arabist. Atrash stuck to the slogan developed in the 1920s: “Religion is for God, the fatherland is for all.” He died of a heart attack in 1982 in Syria at the age of ninety.

  Atrash remains a national hero today for Syrians. A bronze statue of Atrash and his followers bedecks the central plaza in Majdal Shams in the Golan, which is currently occupied by Israel. But in a reflection of modern-day politics, he remains controversial.

  “For the Druze and Syrian nationalists, they see him as a hero who fought with all he could against the French mandate,” said El-Hindy. “The Christians in Lebanon would look at him with a more careful eye. [Because of] his attempt to unify Lebanon and Syria, they would be more hesitant to consider him a hero.”23