Elsewhere in Focus: Syria

All Recent Stories Staff Community Trending Elections From Markos' Desk Comics Community Groups Community Spotlight Actions Civiqs Make a Donation

Help Desk Jobs Work With Us Advertising Overview

Elsewhere in Focus: Syria

by AVeng

Community

(This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday, May. 08, 2024 Wednesday, May. 08, 2024 at 3:30:20am PDT

The picture is a screenshot from UN OCHA situation report on northwest Syria. The text is available here: https://www.unocha.org/publications/report/syrian-arab-republic/north-west-syria-situation-report-15-mar-2024

Hello, everyone. Good morning, afternoon or evening, and welcome to this edition of Elsewhere in Focus. You can find all the articles in the series here (along with my other diaries).

“Iran is bombing Syria. Turkey is bombing Syria. Israel is bombing Syria. At this point, who is not bombing Syria?” —Conrad Barwa on twitter (quoted from my memory)

Tweeted months back, the above quote perhaps demonstrates the current situation in Syria perfectly. Syria has become the punching bag and the theatre of proxy war for a number of regional and global powers. Ordinary people are caught in the middle and are suffering dire humanitarian consequences.

Most of you might have kept up with the story when Syria was in the news a few years back. However, the world moved on and Syria is no longer a topic of conversation in US presidential debates nor is anyone asking a potential candidate to talk about Aleppo.

Syrians though continue to both protest and suffer with no end in sight to their sufferings.

That is why we are talking about Syria today.

Syria

What Is Happening in Syria?

Syria is at present going through a civil war that has been seeing interventions from global and regional powers including the US and Russia, Turkey, Iran, UAE, Saudi Arabia and Israel on different sides of the conflict.

The Council of Foreign Relations’ Global Conflict Tracker gives a brief history and summary of the present situation. (Updated 13 February 2024).

What began as protests against President Assad’s regime in 2011 quickly escalated into a full-scale war between the Syrian government—backed by Russia and Iran—and anti-government rebel groups—backed by the United States and a rotating number of U.S. allies, including France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Three campaigns drive the conflict: coalition efforts to defeat the self-proclaimed Islamic State, violence between the Syrian government and opposition forces, and military operations against Syrian Kurds by Turkish forces.

The Islamic State began seizing control of territory in Syria in 2013. After a series of terrorist attacks coordinated by the Islamic State across Europe in 2015, the United States, the United Kingdom, and France—with the support of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and other Arab partners—expanded their air campaign in Iraq to include Syria. Together, these nations have conducted over eleven thousand air strikes against Islamic State targets in Syria, while the U.S.-led coalition has continued its support for ground operations by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Turkish troops have been involved in ground operations against the Islamic State since 2016 and have launched attacks against armed Kurdish groups in Syria.

Meanwhile, at the request of the Syrian government in September 2015, Russia began launching air strikes against what it claimed were Islamic State targets, while Syrian government forces achieved several notable victories over the Islamic State, including the reclamation of the city of Palmyra. According to the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State, Iraqi security forces and the SDF have reclaimed 98 percent of the territory formerly held by the group in Iraq and Syria, including the cities of Raqqa and Deir al-Zour.

With Russian and Iranian support, the Syrian government has steadily regained control of territory from opposition forces, including the opposition’s stronghold in Aleppo in 2016. The regime has been accused of using chemical weapons numerous times over the course of the conflict, resulting in international condemnation in 2013, 2017, and 2018. Opposition forces have maintained limited control in Idlib, in northwestern Syria, and on the Iraq-Syria border. However, the 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquake has made effective governance nearly impossible, as the opposition forces have scrambled to meet the needs of citizens.

Efforts to reach a diplomatic resolution have been unsuccessful. Geneva peace talks on Syria—a UN-backed conference for facilitating a political transition led by UN Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura—have been unsuccessful in reaching a political resolution, as opposition groups and Syrian regime officials struggle to find mutually acceptable terms for resolving the conflict. A new round of peace talks began in Geneva in May 2017 with an eighteen-person delegation from Syria but has since stalled. Also in 2017, peace talks initiated by Russia in Astana, Kazakhstan, with Iran, Turkey, and members of Syria’s government and armed opposition leaders resulted in a cease-fire agreement and the establishment of four de-escalation zones. However, shortly after the cease-fire was announced, attacks by Syrian government forces against rebel-held areas in the de-escalation zones resumed.

However, to gain a better understanding of the conflict, we need to go further back. Into the colonial era.

Syria and the Colonial Era

As with the conflict in Congo and Sudan, the story starts with betrayal, colonialism and divide and rule. The current ethnic tensions, as the Arabs see it and as scholars interpret it, can be traced to that era.

During the first world war, the British promised Arabs their own independent country in return for rebelling against the Ottoman rule. They also signed a secret treaty, called the Sykes-Picot agreement, with the French and the Russians to carve up the former Ottoman territories in the region amongst themselves if and when the war concluded in their favour.

Arabs rebelled and threw off Ottoman rule—with British forces joining the fray—but after the war, they were betrayed. Neither the League of Nations nor Britain or France supported self-rule under Sharif Faisal for Arabs in Syria. Instead, the region was carved up between the British and the French, officially so that they can facilitate self-rule. However, unofficially, the colonial powers were interested in oil and other material gains and did their best to break Arab nationalistic aspirations. The BBC timeline for Syria for its country profile lists these colonial milestones.

The history of Sykes-Picot and its importance to the current politics of West Asia is beyond this piece. However, you can read about it in this Al Jazeera interactive explainer and this piece from Conversation. Suffice to say that the division on map gave no credence to existing ethnic diversity. Combined with the colonial period divide and rule, the result was the current tensions we see in the region.

The Harvard Divinity School has a page on the French policy during the colonial era and its repercussions.

Following World War I and the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire, the League of Nations divided “Greater Syria” into two parts: The southern half (known as Palestine) was mandated to Great Britain and the northern part (modern Lebanon and Syria) was mandated to France. Insights into the contemporary tensions in Syria can be found by examining the legacies of some of the policies implemented by the French under mandate rule.

According to the principle of the mandate, an "advanced" state was expected to tutor a less-advanced state in the complexities of democratic self-government until the latter was prepared for self-rule. It was perceived as a liberal concept that differed from colonization, though in practice mandated powers tended to act in their own interests. For example, France implemented policies that led to social and political fragmentation in an effort to stem Sunni led Arab nationalist movements that might have jeopardized France’s interests in the region and in northern Africa.

Arab nationalist movements were also threatening for many of the religious and ethnic minorities who were concerned about the prospect of Sunni dominance. France helped to curry the favor of these groups by strengthening influence and autonomy among minorities concentrated in particular regions and by diffusing the power of majority Sunni populations. The Alawis (known as Nusayris before being formally renamed in the 1920s) were heavily concentrated in the mountain district behind Latakia and that region became a separate state under French rule. Similarly, the Jabal al-Druze region south of Damascus was heavily populated by the Druze and was also granted independent status under the umbrella of French protection.

Another strategy employed by the French was to concentrate religious and ethnic communities within different branches of the government. This was especially pronounced in the army and police forces where the French recruited in areas far from the urban centers where Arab nationalist sentiments were strongest. Several battalions were populated by Alawis who saw the military as a form of social and economic advancement. Though they were always a numerically significant minority under both Ottoman and French rule, they were economically marginalized due to their longstanding status as peasants to Christian and Sunni landowners. Conversely, most Sunni landowners and urban dwellers who were engaged in commerce were loathe to support what they perceived to be French imperial interests through military service and were economically advantaged enough to afford the redemption fee levied as an alternative.[1]

The French as noted broke apart Arab nationalist aspirations, sometimes brutally and other other times through vile. Ethnic tensions, already not quite the best, became inflamed. Political fragmentation followed. The result was a post-independence polity that was highly fragmented. After Syria gained independence, the minorities such as Alawi and Druze feared Sunni Arab domination.

There were political experiments, coups and eventually, Hafiz Al Assad came to power. Assad belonged to Alawis (as does his his son), a Shia sect, and the majority in the country is Sunni. This along with Iran’s support for Assad has introduced a sectarian element (Shia vs. Sunni) to the conflict.

Repression Under Assad, Father and Son

The current discontent can trace its lineage to the Assad era when repression was the norm, civil rights were suspended through declaration of an emergency and any discontent was brutally suppressed. Zachary Laub writes about the history in “Syria’s Civil War: The Descent Into Horror” for CFR (14 February 2023). Read this piece for a near-comprehensive history.

Hafez al-Assad seized control from a Baathist military junta in 1970, centralizing power in the presidency. He came from the Alawi minority, a heterodox Shia sect that had long been persecuted in Syria and was elevated to privileged positions under the post–World War I French mandate.

In February 1982, Hafez al-Assad ordered the military to put down a Muslim Brotherhood uprising in the city of Hama with brute force. Syrian forces killed more than twenty-five thousand people there. For the regime’s opponents, Hama would become a rallying cry in 2011. For the regime, it provided Hafez’s son and successor, Bashar, with a template for responding to dissent.

The Assads presided over a system that was not just autocratic but kleptocratic, doling out patronage to bind Syrians to the regime. As the 2011 uprising turned into civil war, many members of minority groups remained loyal to the regime, but so too did some Sunnis, fearing revenge if opposition forces were to take Damascus.

Assad the son followed Assad the father’s policy of keeping a few allies well-endowed while the majority remained in poverty. Result? Protests.

Bashar al-Assad succeeded his father in 2000 pledging reforms. He promised to let markets take the place of the “Arab socialism” touted by the Baathist state, upending old patronage networks. He broke up and privatized state monopolies, but the benefits were concentrated among those well-connected with the regime, while the end of subsidies and price ceilings harmed rural peasants and urban laborers. A record-setting drought from 2006 to 2010 exacerbated socioeconomic problems. Mismanaged farmland was rendered fallow and farmers migrated to cities in ever-larger numbers, causing the unemployment rate to surge.

The Arab Spring began in December 2010 with the self-immolation of a Tunisian fruit vendor decrying corruption. His act prompted protests in Tunisia, and then across the Middle East and North Africa, which forced longtime strongmen in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen to step down. Inspired by these previously unthinkable events, fifteen boys in the southwestern city of Deraa, Syria, spray-painted on a school wall: “The people want the fall of the regime.” They were arrested and tortured. Demonstrators who rallied behind them clashed with police, and protests spread. Many protesters were calling for something more modest than regime change: the release of political prisoners, an end to the half-century-old state of emergency, greater freedoms, and an end to corruption. Unlike Tunisia’s Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, Assad responded to protesters immediately, offering just token reforms while directing security services to put down the protests with force.

The protests were unarmed but the Syrian government sent in tanks to counter them. In self-defense, some of the protestors took up arms. Political turmoil followed and in that chaotic time, Islamic State rose to power in some of the rebel regions.

The regime’s torture and killing was exploited by al-Qaeda militants eager to capitalize on Syria’s chaos. In January 2012, a group called Jabhat al-Nusra announced itself as al-Qaeda’s Syrian franchise, and the following month al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri called for Sunnis from around the region to join a jihad against the regime. Jabhat al-Nusra gained Syrian and foreign recruits as it scored greater battlefield successes than rival opposition groups.

In April 2013, a group formed from the remnants of al-Qaeda in Iraq that called itself the Islamic State of Iraq emerged and exceeded even Jabhat al-Nusra in its brutality. In several months, its forces established control over territory spanning eastern Syria and western Iraq. The ascendance of the Islamic State and other extremists groups fed an increasingly sectarian conflict, and civilians living in the fiefs of the Islamic State—like those living under the control of the FSA and pro-regime militias—suffered abuse.

The rise of extremist groups in Syria was, in part, the regime’s own doing, as Assad wanted to present to the world a stark choice between his secular rule and a jihadi alternative. In mid-2011, the regime released hundreds of Islamist militants from prisons to discredit the rebellion. They would form extremist groups such as Ahrar al-Sham, which espoused a sectarian agenda.

You know the rest of the story. Everyone around including UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, US, Iran and Russia all rushed in to fight their own wars. Islamic State was reduced to a marginal position but after US troop withdrawal from Syria following a Trump decision, Assad, with Russian and Iranian help, has come to control 70% of the country’s territory. The Arab League, which had suspended Syria from the league, has agreed to admit it back (a sign that they consider the victory Assad’s). Iran and Iraq has paid diplomatic visits to the country, another sign of return to pre-2011 status quo.

Mostly, civil war and suffering continues, with rebels holding power in the north west, Islamic State seeing a resurgence, and the country seeing bombardment from different regional and global powers.

As per a UN commission of inquiry there has been recent escalations in violence (11 March 2024). (Important UN report, please read.)

“Since October, Syria has seen the largest escalation in fighting in four years. With the region in turmoil, a determined international effort to contain the fighting on Syrian soil is imperative. Syria, too, desperately needs a ceasefire,” said Paulo Pinheiro, Chair of the Commission.

“The Syrian people cannot sustain any further intensification of this devastating, protracted war,” Pinheiro said. “More than 90% now live in poverty, the economy is in freefall amid tightening sanctions, and increased lawlessness is fuelling predatory practices and extortion by armed forces and militia.”

The upsurge in fighting in Syria started on 5 October when consecutive explosions during a graduation ceremony at a military academy in the government-controlled city of Homs killed at least 63 people, including 37 civilians, and injured scores.

Syrian Government and Russian forces responded with bombardments affecting at least 2,300 sites in opposition-controlled areas over just three weeks, killing and injuring hundreds of civilians. Their indiscriminate attacks, which may amount to war crimes, hit well-known and visible hospitals, schools, markets and camps for internally displaced persons, and have since continued.

In the midst of this, people, at least some of them, continue to protest.

Foreign Actors

As I have been saying, there are many foreign actors involved in this conflict. The International Institute for Strategic Studies lists them (14 December 2021).

In addition to being numerous and highly fragmented, the domestic actors in Syria’s civil war are far from autonomous. There are no fewer than five foreign powers exerting political influence over local forces or military dominance over part of the country. The SDF is arguably the most independent of the actors on the ground, though it is still heavily reliant on Western support. Iran, Israel, Russia, Turkey and the US are all involved militarily and politically in the conflict, albeit to different degrees. A remarkable feature of the civil war is that the interests of third-party states have sometimes clashed but at other times converged, depending on the location, the local clients involved and the issue at stake. For example, Russia–Turkey relations with regard to Syria have alternated between competition and cooperation, though always characterised by a high degree of mistrust. Iran and Turkey, nominally partners in the moribund Astana process, are engaged in a rivalry in the north of the country. Russia ignores Israeli strikes against Iranian targets inside Syria, even though Moscow and Tehran have been close partners in securing Assad’s survival.

Besides the obduracy of the Assad regime, the main factor frustrating any attempt at meaningful conflict resolution is the fact that all the foreign powers involved are pursuing strategic goals, in terms of regional security and geopolitical influence, that extend beyond Syria. Iran has a flexible posture and continues to use Syria to confront Israel by investing in military infrastructure and sponsoring militias. In Syria, Israel pursues its goal of containing Iran’s expansion through intelligence and air capability. It controls the Golan Heights and its aircraft are able to operate freely in Syrian skies, with the Syrian regime unable (and Russia unwilling) to stop them. Turkey’s core goal is to frustrate any Syrian Kurdish ambitions of independence, while keeping its own Kurdish rebellion in check. That is why it has established military buffer zones in Syrian territory. Ankara’s goal has nonetheless become less ambitious during the decade of conflict: its earlier efforts to bring about regime change in Damascus were frustrated by opposing geopolitical interests, and have since proved unrealistic given Tehran’s and Moscow’s support for Assad.

As for Russia, its direct military involvement since 2015, although heavy-handed, has played a major role in preventing the fall of the Assad regime. Moscow’s main focus has been on providing military support to government forces, helping them regain territory and exerting political influence over Assad, whose survival arguably depends on Russia. Meanwhile, the US administration, under presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden, has disengaged from conflict-management efforts in the Middle East, including in Syria.

But as the CFR piece says, US is no longer disengaged from the country.

What Is the Humanitarian Situation?

As per a United Nations report released in 2022, over 300,000 civilians were killed in the Syrian war (30 June 2022).

Amongst the 350,209 overall documented deaths resulting directly from the conflict - over the decade in question- 143,350 were civilians. For each of these civilians, we have been able to document the names, dates and locations of death.

In addition, a further 163,537 civilian deaths were estimated to have occurred, bringing the total estimated civilian death toll to the shocking number of 306,887 in this ten-year period, the highest estimate yet of conflict-related civilian deaths in the country.

This means that every single day since the fighting started in March 2011, 83 civilians - comprising 9 women and 18 children - have died.

The massive figures in the report do not include indirect deaths, namely those resulting mainly from loss of access to essential goods and services that was caused or aggravated by the conflict.

By other counts, the toll may be greater than half a million (01 June 2021).

An OCHA report gives more details on the humanitarian situation (February 2024).

In 2024, 16.7 million people are expected to require assistance, the largest number ever since the beginning of the crisis in 2011.

Syria remains a protection crisis. Children continue to be killed, women and girls continue to fear for their safety and 7.2 million Syrians remain in displacement, many of whom living in overcrowded camps. Unaddressed widespread unexploded ordnance (UXO) impacts people’s livelihoods and movements, with negative consequences for the long-term perspectives of people in need, rendering the prospects of durable solutions bleak. From 1 January to 31 October 2023, 454 civilians, including 88 women and 115 children, were killed as a result of the conflict. The lack and/or loss of civil documentation as well the lack, loss or destruction of housing, land and property documents remain serious issues for hundreds of thousands of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) with devastating physical and psychological effects and risks of statelessness.

The February 2023 earthquakes in north Syria and Türkiye have added agony to an already catastrophic situation, increasing the strain on services, causing displacement, and inflicting widespread damage. The earthquakes resulted in almost 6,000 deaths and more than 12,800 people injured in Syria. Many families lost their main breadwinner due to death or injury, at a time when the economic situation was already dire, resulting in millions of people unable to meet their basic needs.

The OCHA situation report on northwest Syria has the numbers in easily digestible bits (March 2024).

After 13 years of conflict, the humanitarian situation in north-west Syria is at its worst. 3.4 million people are internally displaced - up from 2.9 million people last year.

Almost half of the 4.2 million people in need are children, many of whom live in overcrowded camps. 89 per cent of children in north-west Syria require protection assistance.

Active hostilities have killed at least seven civilians, including one child, and injured 31 others in the first two months of 2024, reported local health authorities.

Early recovery support is ongoing to address protracted needs. Over 31,000 families have been moved out of tents into dignified shelters over the past two years.

The cross-border response is facing the worst funding crisis in its history. Critical functions of nine hospitals were temporarily suspended last year due to funding shortfalls.

Meanwhile, the funding coverage from international actors has been paltry at 5.51%.

What Do We Do?

First and foremost, do not engage in what Leila Al-Shami calls the anti-imperialism of idiots.

The first was when Obama contemplated striking the Syrian regime’s military capability (but didn’t) following chemical attacks on the Ghouta in 2013, considered a ‘red line’. The second time was when Donald Trump ordered a strike which hit an empty regime military base in response to chemical attacks on Khan Sheikhoun in 2017. And today, as the US, UK and France take limited military action (targeted strikes on regime military assets and chemical weapons facilities) following a chemical weapons attack in Douma which killed at least 34 people, including many children who were sheltering in basements from bombing.

The first thing to note from the three major mobilisations of the western ‘anti-war’ left is that they have little to do with ending the war. More than half a million Syrians have been killed since 2011. The vast majority of civilian deaths have been through the use of conventional weapons and 94 per cent of these victims were killed by the Syrian-Russian-Iranian alliance. There is no outrage or concern feigned for this war, which followed the regime’s brutal crackdown on peaceful, pro-democracy demonstrators. There’s no outrage when barrel bombs, chemical weapons and napalm are dropped on democratically self-organized communities or target hospitals and rescue workers. Civilians are expendable; the military capabilities of a genocidal, fascist regime are not. In fact the slogan ‘Hands off Syria’ really means ‘Hands off Assad’ and support is often given for Russia’s military intervention. This was evident yesterday at a demonstration organized by Stop the War UK where a number of regime and Russian flags were shamefully on display.

This left exhibits deeply authoritarian tendencies, one that places states themselves at the centre of political analysis. Solidarity is therefore extended to states (seen as the main actor in a struggle for liberation) rather than oppressed or underprivileged groups in any given society, no matter that state’s tyranny. Blind to the social war occurring within Syria itself, the Syrian people (where they exist) are viewed as mere pawns in a geo-political chess game. They repeat the mantra ‘Assad is the legitimate ruler of a sovereign country’. Assad – who inherited a dictatorship from his father and has never held, let alone won, a free and fair election. Assad – whose ‘Syrian Arab Army’ can only regain the territory it lost with the backing of a hotchpotch of foreign mercenaries and supported by foreign bombs, and who are fighting, by and large, Syrian-born rebels and civilians. How many would consider their own elected government legitimate if it began carrying out mass rape campaigns against dissidents? It’s only the complete dehumanization of Syrians that makes such a position even possible. It’s a racism that sees Syrians as incapable of achieving, let alone deserving, anything better than one of the most brutal dictatorships of our time.

Second, spread awareness and force the powerful countries, through the politicians, to engage with the conflict, while centring Syrian civilians so that they are empowered.

And finally, do more to help refugees and campaign against the misinformation that leads to actions and policies against migrants (7 May 2024).

Cyprus is the closest European Union (EU) member state to Syria and Lebanon. This year, the number of Syrians arriving to the island by boat has spiked. Throughout the first four months of 2024, at least 50 boats reached Cyprus, compared to just 10 during the same period last year, according to data from the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) in Cyprus. In response, Cyprus stopped reviewing Syrian asylum applications and has ramped up its policing of the seas.

“Screaming in Fear”

After about 10 hours — when the boats were roughly halfway between Cyprus and Lebanon — two Cypriot ship sped toward Basil and the other passengers. The vessels began to circle around them, creating forceful waves that rocked the small fishing boats back and forth.

Together, one way or another, we must create a better world system.

That is it for today. Until next Wednesday, everyone. Stay safe. Be well. Take care.

May the ideology of divide and rule perish soon. And may we learn to live with and cherish each other and our differences.