Understanding Syria

Quite some time ago I did a post here called Understanding Iraq.  To my surprise, it's gone on to be one of the most popular posts here.

I've never done one titled "Understanding Syria", and hence this thread.  But I've nearly done so early on when the civil war in Syria began to get serious attention here in the U.S.  That thread from 2013 entitled And Now Syria focused on whether the US should become involved or not, but as it addressed the situation in that unfortunate land and gave some explanation of its background. Given the ongoing deterioration, and the fact that the situation in Iraq and Syria is now much different than it was then, I'm repeating a bit of that below.

 WWI vintage poster for Middle Eastern relief.

Some time ago I wrote an item here on what seemed likely to be an intervention in Syria's civil war.

And now, its being debated in Congress.

I'll applaud the President for submitting this to Congress.  Just last week or so it appeared that the President was set to simply order the Navy to conduct strikes against Syria, in retaliation for the Syrian government using chemical weapons on its own people, without bothering to bring in Congress, but the British Parliament turned that around. That only occurred as Parliament was being asked by Prime Minister David Cameron to support the upcoming U.S. strike. Parliament said no.  That caused the President, in what now seems to be a miscalculation, to seek authorization from Congress.  Right now, to my surprise really, Congress doesn't seem  likely to grant that authority. As a result, there's some discussion on the President ordering the strikes anyway, which would be a massive political miscalculation.  Of our allies, there's a movement in Canada to require their PM to follow Britain's lead and submit the question to Parliament, which would likely vote no.  France appears to be the only country that is likely to support us, but probably for historical reasons that we have a very dim appreciation of.

 Bedouin riding through Roman triumphal arch, Palmyra Syria, 1939.

In Congress views on this topic are split three ways.  One camp wants to authorize the President's proposal, which is to make a limited strike over a 90 day period in retaliation for the government's use of chemical weapons on civilians.  Another wants to stay out of the war entirely.  A third will vote no as, ironically, it wants to jump into the war, topple the government and create a new one we, we think, will like better.

That's basically John McCain's position, or at least that's his position by implication. But do we dare to suppose that's realistic?  And if it is not, do we dare get into this thing at all?  Do we even understand Syria?

 Straight Street in Damascus. This street is so old its mentioned in the New Testament.

Americans tend, to an almost charming degree, to believe the diametrically opposed beliefs that the United States is the best country in the world and that every other country is just like us.  What country may be the best in the world is a subjective matter, but objectively, not every nation and not every people are just like us.  Far from it.

Most nations in the world, or at least most successful ones, are "nation states".  A nation state is a country made up of one nation. This notion, or rather this fact, is so contrary to our own experience that generally we don't really grasp what it means.  Indeed, in our pledge of allegiance we even state that we are "one nation, under God."

"Syrian" (almost certainly Lebanese) children playing in the streets of New York City.  There is a huge global diaspora of Lebanese.  According to some, the Lebanese diaspora is the most successful, in terms of business and wealth, in the world.  The Lebanese are distinct for a variety of reasons, including that at the time of the formation of their country Maronite Catholics made up a majority of the population.

Perhaps, over time, the American "nation" has become just that, but most stable countries in the world have been formed by nationalism, and that nationalism long ago separated out the borders of the country along cultural boundaries. This appears to be changing in the modern world, but it's still largely the case. That is, France is a country for the French.  Italy is a country that united in the 19th Century in an effort to combine all the Italians, and some who were sort of Italians, into one country.  Germany united in the 1870s as a confederation of German principalities.

 Roman temple for Emperor Diocletian, a figure frequently noted for persecution of early Christians.

Conversely, the Austro Hungarian Empire flew apart in the early 20th Century partially because the constituents of that empire no longer wanted to be ruled by a common government.  Hungary, Austria and Czechoslovakia became separate countries, with that process rolling along right up until almost the present day, as Czechoslovakia, made up of the Czechs and the Slovaks, split into two separate countries, each of which is a nation state.  We witnessed something similar to this in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, when a country made for the "south Slavs" busted up along ethnic lines that essentially only they could discern.

Not all modern countries are nation states, of course.  The United States, for example is not. And countries that share a common origin to that of the US are not.  That is, Canada and Australia, also nations that were formed via the immigration from many parts of the Europe and even the globe aren't. The United Kingdom isn't, although in the true European fashion the various nations that make up the UK; IE., England, Scotland and Wales, have remained nations rather than blending to a surprising degree. And as noted, this was so much the case for Ireland, once part of the UK, that it violently departed.

A person could legitimately ask, of course, what the heck this has to do with Syria, but it has a great deal to do with it.  Syrian isn't a nation state.  And not only isn't a nation state, it isn't like the US or Canada in which the various ethnicities mix fairly readily. They don't mix.

A person might find that surprising, and many Americans apparently don't realize this at all.  We keep hearing about "they Syrians" but who are they?  A person with an ear for history might presuppose that the Syrians of today are the Assyrians of old, but they'd only be very partially correct.

 Syrian Bedouin, 1939.

Assyrians do indeed living on, in some fashion, in the DNA of many Syrians today, but modern Syria isn't he Assyria of old.  Even by the time of Christ what is now Syria had come under the influence of some foreign populations, namely the Greeks, which is why Syrian actually fit so seamlessly into early Christian history.  The coastal region of what was in very modern times Syria was at that time, as now, Lebanon, and that area had its own ancient populations that contributed to its nature, namely the Phoneticians, who may have descended from the Philistines.

 Syrian gypsies.

As noted, Syria was a region of the Middle East whose population took rapidly to Christianity, and there have been Christians in Syria ever since the 1st Century. Christianity took so rapidly to Syria that Damascus was where St. Paul was headed in order to persecute the Christians when he had his Epiphany.  And that also tells us that there were Jewish populations there at that time as well, but there were throughout the Middle East at the time.  Christians were first called that in Syria, Antioch to be precise, although that city is now in Turkey, on the Syrian border.

Ruins of Crusader era church in Syria, 1939.

Like the rest of the Middle East, Syria was invaded by the Arabs during the early Islamic period, and like places where there was a strong Christian presence, the Arabs were never able to fully supplant the native Christian population. This has very much been the case in Syria.  Today, Syria is made up of Islamic populations, Christian populations, often in their own areas, Alawites (a minority Moslem group), the Druse and some Kurds.  None of these groups has much in common with the other, except by the exent to which the minority groups, the Christians, Druse and Alwaties fear, and have reason to fear, the majority Moslem Arabs.

 Representatives of the Orthodox in the US, following the Russian Revolution.  In addition to Maronite Catholics, Syria has populations of Antiochean (Syrian) Orthodox.  Contrary to the way history is sometimes imagined, Roman Catholic Crusaders, upon taking Antioch, restored the Antiochean prelate to his seat.

The Ottoman Turks occupied and governed Syria for eons, until the Ottoman Empire disappeared due to World War One.  France received Syria, with which it had strong historical ties, as sort of a consolation prize for helping the British defeat the Turks during the Great War.  France occupied Syria from 1918 until 1946, keeping it through several changes in the French republican government and even into the Vichy period.  Syrian troops served the French in World War Two, both in the Vichy cause and the in the Free French cause. In some ways Syria was the French consolation prize for its role in the Middle East in World War One, as the French also fought the Ottoman's there, but it also recognized that France's role in the region existed for historic reasons going back to the Crusades. Many of the Christian Kingdoms of the Crusading period saw significant French colonization and a recent work by a British author has made the point that during this period not only were a majority of the residents Christians (and were well after the fall of the Crusader kingdoms) but that in some areas, but not all, they were basically French colonies. French trade with the region kept on keeping on in to modern times, and its worth noting that about the only government that appears inclined to get into Syria now is France.

 The British High Commissioner for Palestine, left, and the French High Commissioner for Syria, right, with young lad in middle, 1926.

Anyhow, while the French have a pretty poor record in regards to the success of their 19th and 20th Century colonies, in terms of becoming modern states so their experiences must be used as examples with caution, Syria did have the benefit of both Ottoman and Syrian administration and that doesn't appear to have lead to a real concept of forming a modern state really. If France was unable to do it in 20 years, I don't think we'll be able to in ten or fifteen, or whatever period we'd be willing to invest in the country if we got in full bore.  And to suppose that the Syrian rebels are going to create a parliament and recognize civil liberties without European or American boots on the ground is absurd. The French, we might note, had the benefit of being successors to the Ottomans, which meant that the Syrian population wasn't really inclined to be hostile to a foreign overlord, as they now will be under any scenario.

 Kurds, a stateless people, are native to a region encompassing parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.  The Kurds are actually responsible for the final stages of the spread is Islam, not the Arabs, and have given it an enduring memory of a unitized theocratic state and the false myth of enduring a Christian invasion. Ironically, not all Kurds are Moslems today, nor have they ever been.

On French administration, one thing worth noting is that the French came to the conclusion that it wasn't possible to rule Syria as a single political entity, and they ultimately created districts on ethnic lines. Lebanon exists today for that reason. The Alawites and the Druse also had their own regions. We always seem to think that any country we step into makes sense as a nation, and that would go counter to the modern experience of the Middle East in general, and Syria in particular. That is, why Syria at all? For that matter, why Iraq? It probably makes more sense that these countries be busted up into their ethnicities, which do not mix. But we won't do that. And whoever we prop up isn't going to want to do that either as no government ever desires to become less powerful and control less country.  In other words, the Kingdom of Sweden might have been willing to recognize that Norway wanted to be its own country in 1903 without fight, but Syria isn't going to do that with any of its minorities. For that matter, even the highly civilized United Kingdom fought to keep disenchanted Ireland in the group form 1918 to 1922, and I doubt that any Middle Eastern nation would do less.

 Druse refugees, 1925. The Druse are an Islamic sect despised by other Islamic groups.  They live in Lebanon, Israel and Syria today.  Early opponents of the Turks, and allies of the British in World War One, today they are closest to Israel.

Regarding the ethnicities, examination of the sides in Syria ought to really give us pause. Syria has some really distinct ethnicities.

By and large, Syrian Christians are afraid of the rebels, as they fear that a rebel victory will mean their end, and in my view it probably would. Alawites feel the same way. We (the US) feel that because the government is brutal, we should depose it, but should we depose it in favor of a probable bigger brutality? I just can't see a way out of this mess that doesn't leave us with blood on our hands in one way or another.

On that, it's interesting to note that some 20 years ago or so the Syrian government crushed another rebellion, and that's come up in this context from time to time. But, what of that rebellion? It was by hard core Islamist. Had it succeeded, Syrian would be an Arab Iran today. The crushing of the rebellion was brutal. That's inexcusable. But had it not been crushed, the result would have been grim for us. Do we even want to have to be associated with the results of a civil war there today, given that any result is grim from our prospective?

Indeed, when we look at the overall state of the Middle East, I think its' general folly to view any of the existing political entities as likely to be permanent. No government there looks stable long term, and those that do are challenged by demographics. That being the case, it might be best to view the Middle East today the way we viewed Eastern Europe prior to WWII. A mysterious backwater that hopefully will muddle its way out of the mess its in on its own. One thing we can be thankful for is that with changes in technology, the Middle East is becoming less and less significant economically or in terms of material resources, so we might actually hope for a day when it can conduct its regional spats without us having to be too afraid of the results.

Postscript

When we posted this one year ago, it probably looked like we were engaging in a rather paranoid example of Realpolitik.  Well, events here have really born us out.  Those who were cheerleading for intervention in Syria last September, when we posted this, would have effectively handed Damascus to the Islamic State, which proved to be sufficiently powerful as to be able to expand its old fashioned religious war, with modern weapons, into Iraq and nearly topple that government.   The Presidents reluctance, therefore, to intervene in Syria proved wholly justified.  Indeed, it now appears inevitable that we will soon be committing air assets over Syria and bombing the same enemy that the Syrian air force is.

Make no mistake, Assad is not in the warm and fuzzy category of leader, and Syria deserves better.  But Syria also isn't Ireland, whose rebels will adopt a parliament and immediately become a model of democratic behavior.  It has a long way to go, and we best be careful lest it become part of the Islamic State, or something like it.

A lot of what I wrote about back in 2013 remains true, but the situation there, and in Iraq, is now so far gone that it cries out for international action, and has been so crying out for months and months.

Now, France has been attacked either by ISIL or ISIL's confederates and sympathizers.  Floods of Syrian refugees have hit Europe. The country is nearly destroyed and has been reduced to an insane land of conflict, with the only really semi functional parts being those thing slices so firmly controlled by one side or another that some semblance of a remote normalcy exist.

What could have been avoided earlier on no longer can be.  The western world has no choice but to address the chaos in Syria, and that can only be done militarily.  That's because Syria is effectively a wild lawless land which is part of the Islamic State, a state in reality if not in recognition. And the Islamic state will murder anyone who is not a Sunni with its same radical views, and it will export its war everywhere.  It must.