Although Syria was formally recognized as independent when
it was occupied by UK troops during World War II, “the essential prerogatives
of sovereignty—full legislative and administrative powers and control over the
armed forces—had” still “to be wrested from the French,” according to Patrick
Seale’s The Struggle for Syria. So after its Lebanese members were
authorized to form a separate Lebanese Communist Party in Lebanon in 1943, the
Syrian Communist Party-- which Khalid Bakdash led—participated in a 1943
election in Syria under European colonial rule and campaigned on a platform
which called for: 1. Independence and Freedom for Syria; 2. Unity in the cause
of national independence; and 3. The creation of truly representative
institutions in Syria.
According to The Struggle for Syria, “…In
Syria…France was reluctant to give up her…`special position’ there” after World
War II, but because the UK had “guaranteed Syrian…independence” when it
occupied Syria militarily in 1941, “decisive support for the Syrian nationalist
leaders in the final tussle with the French” (after French troops had returned
to Syria) was given by the UK government in 1945.
Yet before people in Syria finally won their political
independence from French government rule on Apr. 17, 1946 (when the last
contingent of French imperialist troops left Syria), large demonstrations of
Syrians demanding the withdrawal of French troops from Syria had to be held in
the last week of January 1945 and on May 29 and May 30, 1945; and, in response,
French military authorities in Damascus had “bombed the city from the air and
shelled the newer quarter in Damascus, killing many people and making thousands
homeless,” according to Alan George’s Syria: Neither Bread nor Freedom. As
Philip Khoury’s Syria and The French Mandate recalled:
“…Large anti-French demonstrations in Damascus in the last
week of January 1945 were countered by a visible display of French military
strength in the Syrian capital…By May [1945] the French were reinforcing the
garrisons, mainly with the much dreaded and hated Senegalese troops…
“Demonstrations broke out in Damascus…Anti-French activities
quickly spread all over Syria…The French military command…shelled and bombed
Damascus from the air between the evening of May 29 [1945] and noon on May 30
[1945]…The newer, modern quarters received the brunt of French punishment…The
number of Syrian casualties and the amount of physical destruction was heavy. It
included 400 dead, countless injured…Renewed anti-French protests in the towns
of Syria…brought by spring [1946] a complete withdrawal of French troops and
other military personnel from Syrian territory…”
As a political alternative to Syria’s secular nationalist
and secular left anti-imperialist groups, during the middle of the 1930s, the
anti-imperialist Muslim Brotherhood of Syria had been established in Aleppo
“when Syrian students…returning from Egypt began forming branches in different
cities under the title Shabab Mohammad (Young Men of Mohammed),” according to
Dilip Hiro’s Holy Wars: The Rise of Islamic Fundamentalism; and Syria’s
Muslim Brotherhood at this time also “had stood for an end” to French rule in
Syria and “for social reform along Islamic lines” in Syria.
But in 1944 the headquarters of Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood
was moved to Damascus and a friend of Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood founder
Hassan al-Banna, named Mustafa al Sibai, was elected as General Supervisor of
Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood. Then, according to Holy Wars, “once the
French departed” from Syria in 1946, Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood “concentrated
on socio-economic issues, always stressing its opposition to secularism and
Marxism;” and “it drew the bulk of its support from” Syria’s “urban petty
traders and craftsmen” who, with their families “composed about one-sixth of
the Syrian population.”
(end of part 12)
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