A People's History of Syria--Part 11: 1938 to 1943 Period

Discontent with continued French imperialist control of Syria continue to increase in 1938 after the French government agreed to allow the government of Turkey to annex the Sanjak region of Syria--whose population of 230,000 in 1936 included Syrians of ethnic Turkish background (39 percent), Syrians of Alawite religious background (28 percent), Syrians of Armenian ethnic background (11 percent), Syrians of Sunni religious background and non-ethnic Turkish background (8 percent), Syrians of Greek Orthodox religious background (8 percent) and Syrians of mixed background (6 percent).

But after Turkish troops took control of the Sanjak region of Syria on July 5, 1938 and Sanjak became a Turkish province, 22,000 Syrians of Armenian background, 10,000 Syrians of Alawite religious background, 10,000 Syrians of Sunni religious background and 5,000 Syrians of Greek Orthodox religious background “fled their homes even before French troops had pulled out,” according to Philip Khoury’s Syria and The French Mandate. Yet the same book also observed that as late as only a few months before World War II began, “in July 1939…no one in Syria seriously believed that Syrian independence was still on the French agenda.”

When the Popular Front coalition of anti-fascist parties controlled French imperialism’s government between 1936 and 1939, the Syrian Communist Party was no longer outlawed and “the party organ Sawt al-Shaab (Voice of the People) was allowed to appear legally” in Syria in 1937; and “these 3 brief years, 1936-39, gave” Syrian Communist Party activists their “first opportunity for sustained above-ground activity,” which enabled them to increase Syrian Communist Party membership “from 200 to about 2,000” between 1936 and 1939, according to Patrick Seale’s The Struggle For Syria. But after the Popular Front coalition lost control of the government in France and World War II began in Europe in 1939, French government authorities in Syria again outlawed the Syrian Communist Party in September 1939 and arrested this party’s leaders “soon afterward,” according to the same book. As Syria and The French Mandate noted:

“The Allied Declaration of War against Germany stiffened French control in Syria…Martial law was proclaimed…All radios in cafes and other public places were confiscated to prevent crowds from gathering to listen to the German-Arabic broadcasts…Meanwhile, the French cracked down on their list of political `subversives.’ They closed down the Syrian Communist Party…”

Then, after German imperialism’s Nazi Army occupied France in June 1940 and set up its puppet Vichy regime, the Vichy regime’s French colonial authorities in Syria apparently arranged for the assassination of the long-time leader of Syria’s anti-imperialist national party, Dr. Abdal-Rahman Shahbandar, at the end of June 1940; because the collaborationist pro-German Vichy regime apparently now saw Shahbandar’s Syrian nationalist party as being supportive of UK imperialism’s side during the 1939-1941 period of World War II.

But according to the same book, led by “an Arabized Kurd from Damascus” named Khalid Bakdash (who had been jailed by French colonial authorities during the early 1930s), the Syrian Communist Party organized underground resistance to the French Vichy government authorities in Syria in 1940 and 1941, before UK imperialist troops entered Syria on June 8, 1941 and established complete UK military control over Syrian territory on July 14, 1941.

The following year, however, widespread strikes of workers and students broke out in Syria; and, as Syria and The French Mandate observed, the Syrian Communist Party’s “role in the numerous bread strikes during the war enhanced its reputation both as a defender of the poor and as a bona fide nationalist organization” in Syria. So, by late 1943, the Syrian Communist Party now included high school students, liberal professionals, a small number of railway workshop and textile factory workers and members of both Syria’s ethnic and religious majorities and minorities; and it “claimed several thousand members,” according to the same book.

(end of part 11)

A People's History of Syria--Part 7--section 1: 1925 to 1926 Period

According to Michael Provence’s The Great Syrian Revolt and the Rise of Arab Nationalism, the 1925 revolt in Syria “began in the southern grain-producing region of Jabal Hawran and quickly spread to the Maydan quarter of Damascus;” and this “Great Syrian Revolt” of 1925 to 1927 “was a mass movement” using “tactics of armed revolt” that “were far more radical than much of the elite” nationalist “leadership of Damascus was prepared to embrace.” The Great Syrian Revolt against French control of Syria started on July 19, 1925 when—following the arrest of three Druze [Syrian religious minority group] chiefs by French authorities on July 11, 1925—“Druze farmers” in Syria “shot down a French surveillance airplane” and “Druze rebels attacked French troops in the Jabal” region of Syria, according to the same book.

In late August of 1925, “the most radical among the nationalists and the Druze leaders” in Syria then “resolved to bring the revolt to Damascus,” according to The Great Syrian Revolt and the Rise of Arab Nationalism; and on Aug. 23, 1925 the Commander of the Syrian Revolutionary Armies, Sultan al-Atrash, signed and distributed in Damascus a revolutionary manifesto which indicated the reasons and the goals of the 1925 uprising in Syria:

“…Let us arouse ourselves from our torpor and disperse the dark clouds of foreign oppression which weigh heavily on our land. For 10 years we have struggled for the cause of liberty and independence…

“The imperialists have stolen what is yours. They have laid hands on the very sources of your wealth and raised barriers and divided your invisible homeland. They have separated the nation into religious sects and states. They have strangled freedom of religion, thought, conscience, speech, and action. We are no longer even allowed to move about freely in our own country…

“To arms! Let us free our country from bondage…

“…These are our demands:

“1. The complete independence of Arab Syria, one and indivisible, sea-coast and interior;

“2. The institution of a Popular Government and the free election of a Constituent Assembly for the framing of an Organic Law;

“3. “The evacuation of the foreign army of occupation and the creation of a national army for the maintenance of security;

“4. The application of the principles of the French Revolution and the Rights of Man…

“Long live independent Syria!...”

Then on the following day—Aug. 24, 1925—the anti-imperialist Syrian nationalist rebels attempted to attack French troops in Damascus; and “armed bands” of Syrian rebels began “to form in the neighborhoods of Damascus and in surrounding villages,” according to The Great Syrian Revolt and The Rise of Arab Nationalism. But, according to Philip Khoury’s Syria and the French Mandate, French imperialist authorities in Damascus responded to the Aug. 24, 1925 attack of the anti-imperialist Syrian rebels in the following way:

“Sultan al-Atrash’s rebel army was stopped southeast of Damascus by three squadrons of Moroccan Spahis supported by the French air force. Afterwards, the French…initiated a house-to-house search for all suspected nationalist leaders. Many were apprehended and jailed without trial on Arwad Island, some for the second time since the French occupation. French troops also began to inhibit movement in the town with barbed wire…”

Although “the most important nationalist leaders, including Dr. Shahbandar…managed to escape the French dragnet,…French security dismantled what was left of the People’s Party” in Damascus, according to the same book.

Agitation and protests against French imperialist rule, however, continued in Syria in September 1925 and during that month “gradually spread to all the cities of mandate Syria,” in which 20 percent of Syria’s population then lived, according to The Great Syrian Revolt and The Rise of Arab Nationalism. As Syria and The French Mandate observed, “…barred from Damascus, the People’s Party and the Druze leadership set up a nationalist provisional government in the Jabal Druze on Sept. 9 [1925];” and “uprisings first in Hama and then in Damascus in the following month ignited rebellion throughout Syrian territory” so that “by the end of October [1925] large areas of Syria were in revolt.”

(end of part 7/section 2)

A People's History of Syria--Part 6: 1922 to 1925 Period

After being imprisoned in 1922 by French imperialist authorities in Syria for 17 months on Arwad Island, the now-defunct Iron Hand Society’s former leader, Dr. Abdal-Rahman Shahbandar, was then sent into exile by French General Weygand, who was in charge of the French occupation troops in Syria. But by the early Summer of 1924, French authorities apparently felt that Shahbandar no longer represented an anti-imperialist Syrian nationalist political threat to continued French rule in Syria, and so they allowed Shahbandar to return to Syria from exile at that time. As Michael Provence’s The Great Syrian Revolt and the Rise of Arab Nationalism observed, “by 1925 the occupation and pacification of Syria was presumed complete,” and “few imagined that nationalist resistance would emerge in the countryside and spread to the cities—yet this is precisely what happened.”

According to Philip Khoury’s Syria and The French Mandate, after the French government reformed Syria’s judicial system so that “any foreign national involved in a commercial or civil dispute” in Syria could “have his case tried in a court presided over by a French judge” and not by a Syrian judge (and in which “the majority of judges were to be French”), Syrian nationalist lawyers of the Union of Lawyers in Damascus organized protests in 1925. In addition, by 1925, “the stark reality of life in a garrison state in which the French arrested and jailed or exiled scores of their political opponents, using specially constituted military tribunals headed by Frenchmen” also sparked protests in 1925, according to the same book.  The Great Syrian Revolt and the Rise of Arab Nationalism also noted that under French imperialist control of Syria during the first half of the Roaring Twenties, “inflation squeezed people’s income and savings” in Syria, “drought had gripped southern Syria for 3 or 4 years,” the “tax burden on cultivators had risen,” and “heavy-handed direct military rule nurtured nationalist and anti-imperialist feeling among the mandate population.” 

Syria and the French Mandate also observed that discontent with French colonial rule in Syria increased among Muslims in Syria after French authorities transferred “the Syrian section of the Muslim-owned Hejaz Railway to a French railroad company in 1924” because the Hejaz Railway had been “the only railway in Syria not built and owned by Europeans.” In addition, because “the French treated Syria as an imperialist possession to be exploited in the `old’ colonial manner” and “their economic policies” just “promoted French economic interests,” in 1924 “in Aleppo…a French group received the electricity and tramways concession” and were “guaranteed revenues of 8 percent of the invested capital” by French authorities, according to the same book.

So when the nationalist Syrian People’s Party--that the formerly jailed and exiled Iron-Hand Society leader Shahbandar now led--called for a protest in Damascus against the visit of Lord Balfour (the UK imperialist politician whose declaration during World War I had expressed UK government support for the Zionist movement’s establishment of settlements in UK imperialist-controlled Palestine during the 1920s) on Apr. 8, 1925, according to Syria and The French Mandate, the following happened:

“Huge demonstrations in the town were organized against him. Some 10,000 protesters, including hundreds of high school students, gathered at the Umayyad Mosque. While police and gendarmes tried to break up the crowd, Balfour made a hurried exodus to Beirut, escorted by French troops and airplanes. Twenty-six casualties were reported.”

By June 1925, “some 1,000 persons in Damascus” had joined the secular nationalist People’s Party that Dr. Shahbandar led; although, “in spite of its popular support” the urban-based People’s Party was still “essentially an elitist organization” controlled by absentee Syrian landowners, Syrian merchants and Syrian intellectuals, according to the same book. But even without the Damascus-based elitist People’s Party having any organized link to the mass of Syrians who lived in rural areas, French imperialist rule was so unpopular in Syria that in the Summer of 1925 another revolt of people in Syria against the military occupation of their country by French imperialist troops erupted.

(end of part 6)