Mike Scruggs
The Civil War in Syria
is essentially a sectarian war between a politically dominant Shiite
Muslim minority composing about 13 percent of Syria’s 23 million population
and a Sunni Muslim majority of 74 percent. The Druze, a small and highly unorthodox branch of
Islam, number just under 3 percent. Slightly over 10 percent of Syria’s
population is Christian. It was in Antioch in Syria that the followers
of Christ first began to be called Christians. Besides Lebanon, Syria
and Egypt have the highest proportion of Christians in the Middle East.
Most of the Shiite Muslims belong to its unusually moderate Alawite
branch, who have been much more tolerant of Christianity than other
Muslims. They even celebrate some Christian holidays. The Sunni majority
considers the Alawite branch of Shia Islam heretical, including their
protective relationship to Christians. The hostile Sunni majority is
a concern to the various Christian denominations in Syria, which include
Chalcedonian Orthodox (36 percent); Syrian Orthodox (22 percent); various
Levantine Catholic branches (26 percent); and the Armenian Apostolic
Church (11 percent). Both the Alawites and Christians are generally
better off economically than the Sunnis.
About 90 percent of Syrians are ethnic and linguistic
Arabs. They speak the Aramaic dialect of Arabic, the closest dialect
to Hebrew among all Semitic languages.
Jesus spoke Aramaic. The Kurds in Northeastern
Syria are the principal non-Arab people in Syria with about 9 percent
of the population.
The Sunni Muslims in Syria are backed by the
Muslim Brotherhood (MB), an Islamic political and religious organization
with powerful political and financial connections throughout the Muslim
World and in Europe and the United States. The principal military arm
of the Muslim Brotherhood is the Hamas terrorist organization. Originating
among Egyptian Salafists (hard-line Sunni theological radicals), Hamas
is the mother organization of Al-Qaeda, best known for its terrorist
attacks on the U.S. in 2001.
In the last two years, Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad has allied his military dominated government with the much
more radical Shiite Muslims in Iran and Eastern Iraq, including the
Iran-based and financed Hezbollah (Army of God) terrorist organization.
Hezbollah is the largest and best trained terrorist force in the world.
In that sense, Hezbollah resembles a huge elite military fighting force.
But they may operate in small teams or heavily armed battalion-sized
military units. The Assad alliance with Hezbollah is probably a defensive
measure for protection against the Muslim Brotherhood, but it must make
Syrian Christians very nervous.
The rebels against the Assad regime call themselves
the “National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces,”
the “Syrian National Coalition” for short. The UK, France, and the
United States have recognized the rebel organization as the “sole
representative of the Syrian people.” President Obama is a predictably
consistent ally of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Muslim Brotherhood has been waging a war
of varying intensity against the Syrian government at least since 1970.
There was a major Muslim Brotherhood uprising against the government
in the late 1970s, which led to a severe crackdown by the Syrian Army
in 1982. As part of that action, regular Syrian Army troops killed between
10,000 and 40,000 people near the city of Hama.
A re-eruption of the ongoing Syrian civil war
was inspired by the Arab Spring revolutions in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya.
It began with peaceful protests followed by a Syrian Army crackdown.
According to the UN, about 100,000 people have been killed in the last
two years. About 1.5 million Syrian refugees have fled to neighboring
Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq.
Fully mobilized, the Syrian Armed Forces number
about 400,000. Hezbollah fighting strength in Syria is estimated
at between 5,000 and 10,000. Hezbollah’s stated purpose in Syria is
to defend Shia Islam against Sunni aggression in both Syria and neighboring
Lebanon. The military arm of the rebel Syrian National Coalition is
called the Free Syrian Army and numbers about 80,000. Its commander
is dissident Syrian General Salim Idris.
Syria has been a cross-road
for war and empires for the last 5,000 years. Within 300 years of the death of Christ, Syria became
one of the most important Christian regions in the world. Following
the death of Muhammad in 632, Muslim armies from Arabia conquered most
of Syria. Frankish Crusaders retook and established Crusader states
along the western coast in the twelfth and thirteen centuries. But by1260,
the last of the Crusader states had been conquered and fought over by
Muslim Mongols, Egyptians, and finally Turks.
During the First World War, the Ottoman Turkish
Empire allied with Germany. Following the Turkish defeat and the breakup
of the Ottoman Empire, France took the northern half of Greater Syria
and created Syria and Lebanon. Lebanon was separated from Syria because
of its Christian majority. The British took Palestine and Iraq. Syria
was made an independent kingdom in 1920 but only became truly independent
when Syrian nationalists forced French troops to leave in 1946.
One distinctive of Syria is the ideological dominance
of Arab Nationalism, which has been even more influential than Islam
in Syrian politics and foreign policy. In 1958, Syria joined with
Egypt to form the United Arab Republic. Syria, however, seceded from
that Union in 1961.
In 1970, Syria’s Defense Minister, Hafez al-Assad,
a former Air Force officer, seized control of the government.
(The surname “Assad’ means “lion” in Arabic.) Within a
few years Assad had turned Syria into one of the world’s most ruthless
police states. He died of a heart attack in 2000 and was succeeded
by his youngest son, thirty-five-year-old Bashar al-Assad as President
of Syria. Bashar, who was an ophthalmologist in London until his older brother
was killed in an auto accident in 1994, had never expected to be a leader
in Syria.
The lanky six-foot-two
Bashar al-Assad is much more easy-going than his father, and many of
the harsher police state activities have been discontinued. However,
Syria is still unquestionably a totalitarian police state. Any threat
to security is quickly crushed.
In the month of June, the Free Syrian Army murdered
dozens of Christians near the village of Deir el-Zour and beheaded a
Catholic priest and two assistants. The U.S. should not be helping the
Muslim Brotherhood in Syria or anywhere else. Our policy concerning
Syria should be to do no harm.
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