A People's History of Syria--Epilogue: July to December 2014 Period

Between July and December 2014, the Democratic Obama Administration intervened militarily in Syria in a more overt and direct way. As the secular left Syrian Communist Party noted in a Sept. 24, 2014 statement, “in the early morning of Sept. 23, 2014,” the U.S. war machine “with its allies and agents began…armed actions on the territories of Syrian Arab Republic.” According to this same Syrian Communist Party statement:

“…These actions are flagrant violation of international law that prevents the violation of independent state national sovereignty…All pretexts of US imperialism, even the fighting of terrorism, cannot justify national sovereignty violation….”

A Dec. 17, 2014 Reuters article also noted that between late September and Dec. 15, 2014, “the United States carried out 488 air strikes in Syria…according to U.S. military data;” and although “Lieutenant General James Terry…told reporters that the strikes had hurt the Islamic State” (which armed foreign Islamist fighters are attempting to set up in Syrian territory they've occupied in recent years), Baath regime leader Bashar “Assad said this month the U.S.-led campaign had made no difference and Islamic State supporters in Syria say the air strikes have helped the group win support among residents and recruit fighters.” Between Sept. 23 and Nov. 21, 2014, however, more than 900 people, including around 50 civilians, were killed in Syria by the air strikes of the Pentagon and its allies, according to the data collected by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, that politically opposes Assad’s Baath regime.

The armed right-wing group of religiously sectarian Islamic fundamentalist fighters in Syria—ISIS--continued to attack the city of Kobane in the Kurdish-populated northwestern region of Syria between July and December 2014. But according to an Oct. 12, 2014 statement by the secular left Tudeh party of Iran, “the struggle of the Kobane people” was “not only against the ISIS’s professional murderers, but Kobane” was “also indirectly under attack from the reactionary regimes in region, and” was “paying for” the “refusal to align themselves with the policies of the Turkish government and the Arab Kingdoms in the Persian Gulf, led by the United States, for toppling the ruling government in Syria.” The Tudeh Party’s Oct. 12, 2014 also stated:

“Over the past few years, the people of Kobane have not cooperated with the global imperialism’s policy of `regime change’ in Syria. By keeping their relative sovereignty and as an autonomous community, in which green shoots of popular democratic currents could be found, and while advancing the struggle for democracy and national rights, the Kobane people had been opposing the United States’ plan for `regime change’ in Syria… Kobane’s militant women and men are single-handedly fighting a struggle for the survival of their community against the attacks of one of the most reactionary and destructive forces, which has been borne out of imperialist policies of aggression, and nurtured by the local reactionary regimes. The role of women in the resistance movement of the people of Kobane is significant and exemplary. The tragedy in Kobane exposes the inhumane role of those who claim to be the`champions of democracy and human rights’, and above all, the United States and Britain that in recent years, by using various forces in the spectrum of the so called `political Islam’, directly or indirectly have destroyed the popular movements… Erdogan, Turkey’s President, has…allowed the transportation and concentration of Salafist and Jihadist forces and ISIS terrorists through the border, and their bloody war against the Syrian government.

“On Oct. 2 [2014], the world’s media reported the United States Vice-President Joe Biden’s statement clearly indicating that the US allies, including Turkey, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates have played an essential role in the creation and strengthening of ISIS by pouring billions of dollars of money, arms and equipment… Tudeh Party of Iran calls for the immediate and direct involvement of the United Nation in equipping, facilitating and transfer of international peace-keeping forces (instead of NATO) for saving Kobane, and replacing the NATO forces under American leadership by that of the United Nation’s…”

In a November 2014 speech, the Deputy General Secretary of the secular left Lebanese Communist Party, Marie Nassif-Debs also asserted that since September 2014 the U.S. war machine was actually “bombing the cities in Iraq and Syria not to defeat ISIS but to keep the two conflicting powers” in the Syrian conflict “ able to fight and destroy” and “at the same time the multinational petrol companies, on their head the American ones, buy petrol which is seized by the fascist religious forces in Iraq and Syria and big part of this petrol is smuggled through the Turkish system.”

Between July and December 2014, the total number of people in Syria who have been killed, wounded or compelled to become refugees since March 2011 (and since the U.S. government began to covertly train armed Syrian rebels in 2011) has continued to increase. As Reuters reported in a Dec. 17, 2014 article by Alexander Dziadosz:

“More than 120,000 fighters supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have been killed in the country's civil war since it began in 2011, a group monitoring the war said on Wednesday…In total, more than 200,000 people have been killed and millions more have fled their homes….Some 11,000 members of government forces and loyalist militias had been killed in the five months since Assad delivered an inauguration speech for a third presidential term [in July 2014]…The United Nations estimated in August [2014] more than 190,000 people had died in the conflict.”

In a Dec. 19, 2014 Reuters article, Oliver Holmes also noted that “one million people have been wounded during Syria’s civil war and diseases are spreading as regular supplies of medicine fail to reach patients, the World Health Organization’s Syria representative said;” and that “the United Nations” has recently “called…for more than $8.4 billion to help nearly 18 million people in need in Syria and across the region in 2015.”

(end of epilogue)

A People's History of Syria--Conclusion: July 2013 to June 2014 Period

During 2013 and 2014, the foreign government-backed Syrian rebel groups’ attempt to violently overthrow Bashar Assad’s historically undemocratic Baath regime continued. In a Sept. 2, 2013 message “to all Communist Parties and Unions around the world,” the secular left Syrian Communist Party (Unified) group indicated, from its point of view, what had happened in Syria between late 2011 and the fall of 2013, in the following way:

“You know that our country- Syria- has been being exposed for more than twenty months, to a war lunched against it by scores of imperialist states, besides other countries that move round them as satellites.

“Their aim is to destroy the Syrian state that stands as an obstacle on the road of those trying to impose the plan of a `greater Middle East’, after breaking down the states in the region and replacing them with small entities fighting one another, to impose absolute domination on the oil and gas resources; to eliminate the Palestinian problem in a way extremely opposite to the interests of the Palestinian people.

“These countries manipulated the mistakes and shortcomings of the regime on the one hand, and the popular movements opposing these shortcomings. The movements were peaceful at first, later they turned into armed ones, which received support on a wide scale from the alliance that emerged consisting of U.S.A, Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Turkey occupied the border exits with Syria, to help weapons being smuggled, the entrance of thousands of mercenaries calling themselves as Jihadists who built camps for training supporters and allies…These actions are flagrant violation of the international law which prohibits any country to use its territories to attack its neighbors. We know that Turkey, alone, can never do these things without American, European and Gulf States support….

“Syria never believes that the solution of the problem is a military one, rather, it has ever since the birth of the problem called for a peaceful and political solution through a comprehensive national dialogue…. Importantly enough, the Syrian government has declared a new peaceful initiative.

“The initiatives, farther, emphasize the need for democratic reforms, a new constitution, besides a new general and national pact which is to be prepared by all forces including the opposition….Unfortunately, the initiative has been refused instantly by the armed… groups and those who support it and demand that violence…continue…

“So far the Syrian people have paid a very heavy price, tens of thousands of innocent civilian have been killed. Today Syria is exposed to a human catastrophe.

About three millions Syrian citizens have fled their houses and become internally displaced refugees in neighboring countries living in unbelievably miserable conditions needing food and medicine….”

Estimates of the number of Syrians who have been killed since the initial non-violent street protests began in March 2011 are varied.

As of July 2013, United Nations officials estimated that over 100,000 people in Syria had been killed during the post-March 2011 uprising and armed conflict in Syria, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation [CBC]’s website; while a Wikipedia entry indicates that estimates of the number of people killed during the uprising and armed conflict in Syria between March 2011 and May 2014 vary from 108,000 to 162,000.

Of the people in Syria killed between March 2011 and early 2014 during the uprising and armed conflict, an estimated 30,000 to 37,685 of the slain were members of the Assad Baath regime’s Syrian military and police forces, and an estimated 23,000 more were members of Syrian militias that are loyal to the Baath regime, according to the same Wikipedia entry; while an estimated 42,000 to 62,000 of the dead—including an estimated 13,500 slain foreign Islamic fundamentalist fighters—were members of the armed Syrian insurgent groups attempting to overthrow Assad’s Baath regime.

United Nations officials also estimated that--by the beginning of 2014--of the estimated 22.4 million people who lived in Syria in early 2010, around 2.4 million Syrians had fled from Syria due to the post-March 2011 uprising and armed conflict; and that 75 percent of the refugees from Syria were women and children, according to the CBC’s website. In addition, the same website also noted that United Nations officials estimate that since March 2011, over 4 million people still living within Syria’s own territory have also been displaced, due to the impact of the uprising and armed conflict.

But the history of people who live in Syria seems to indicate that neither Turkish, UK, French, or Israeli military occupation or bombing of Syrian territory--nor the continuation of covert or overt foreign government funding and arming of secular or religiously sectarian armed rebel groups--has ever brought much democratization, freedom, economic justice or domestic peace for the majority of the people who have lived in Syria during the last 150 years.

(end of conclusion. Epilogue to follow.)

A People's History of Syria--Part 28--section 2: January to December 2012 Period

A few weeks after armed Syrian rebel groups gained control of Aleppo, Syria on July 18, 2012, a Reuters article by Mark Hosenball, titled “Exclusive: Obama authorizes secret U.S. support for Syrian rebels”, revealed on Aug. 1, 2012 some more details about the U.S. government’s covert and overt support for the armed insurgency in Syria:

“President Barack Obama has signed a secret order authorizing U.S. support for rebels seeking to depose Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his government, U.S. sources familiar with the matter said.

“Obama's order, approved earlier this year and known as an intelligence `finding,’ broadly permits the CIA and other U.S. agencies to provide support that could help the rebels oust Assad…Precisely when Obama signed the secret intelligence authorization, an action not previously reported, could not be determined…A U.S. government source acknowledged that under provisions of the presidential finding, the United States was collaborating with a secret command center operated by Turkey and its allies.

“Last week, Reuters reported that, along with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, Turkey had established a secret base near the Syrian border to help direct vital military and communications support to Assad's opponents.

“This `nerve center’ is in Adana, a city in southern Turkey about 60 miles from the Syrian border, which is also home to Incirlik, a U.S. air base where U.S. military and intelligence agencies maintain a substantial presence….Turkish authorities are said by current and former U.S. government officials to be increasingly involved in providing Syrian rebels with training and possibly equipment.

“European government sources said wealthy families in Saudi Arabia and Qatar were providing significant financing to the rebels…Current and former U.S. and European officials previously said that weapons supplies, which were being organized and financed by Qatar and Saudi Arabia, were largely limited to guns and a limited number of anti-tank weapons, such as bazookas….Separately from the president's secret order, the Obama administration has stated publicly that it is providing some backing for Assad's opponents….Recent news reports from the region have suggested that the influence and numbers of Islamist militants, some of them connected to al Qaeda or its affiliates, have been growing among Assad's opponents…”

According to a 2013 Amnesty International human rights group report, in Syria during 2012, “government forces…carried out indiscriminate attacks on residential areas using aircraft, artillery shells, mortars, incendiary weapons and cluster bombs” and “together with their support militias, they arrested thousands of people.” In addition, “at least 550 were reported to have died in custody, many after torture,” others were extrajudicially executed” and “security forces’ snipers continued to shoot peaceful anti-government demonstrators and people attending public funerals.”

But the same 2013 Amnesty International report also noted that in Syria during 2012, the “armed groups fighting against the government also committed gross abuses, including war crimes,” “tortured and/or summarily killed government soldiers and militia members after taking them prisoner and carried out indiscriminate bombings that killed or injured civilians.”

The 2013 Amnesty International report described how the lives of many people in Syria were impacted by the continued foreign government-backed armed revolt against Assad’s Baath regime in 2012:

“…Hundreds of thousands of people were forced to flee their homes; the UN estimated that over 2 million people were internally displaced and living under conditions of extreme hardship within Syria, and that since the beginning of the conflict almost 600,000 had fled as refugees to neighboring countries, where conditions were often harsh….A bomb attack in the capital Damascus on 18 July, for which the Free Syrian Army [FSA] claimed responsibility, killed the Defense Minister and his deputy, the Assistant Vice-President and the Head of the National Security Bureau. Two days later, armed opposition groups launched an offensive that spread the armed conflict to Aleppo, Damascus and elsewhere….

“Armed groups fighting against the government, including some linked to the FSA, …carried out suicide and other bomb attacks, and at times fired imprecise weapons such as artillery and mortars in densely populated neighborhoods, used inherently indiscriminate weapons such as anti-personnel landmines, and prepared or stored munitions and explosives in residential buildings, endangering civilian occupants…By the end of the year, armed opposition groups were reported to be increasingly threatening and attacking minority communities perceived to be pro-government…

“Government forces and militias routinely used lethal and other excessive force to quell peaceful protests calling for the `fall of the regime’. Hundreds of people, including children and bystanders, who posed no threat to the security forces or others, were killed or wounded by government snipers during protests and public funerals of “martyrs”. ..At least 550 people, including children, were reported to have died in custody, most apparently as a result of torture or other ill-treatment. Many of those who died were suspected government opponents…

“Government forces launched frequent, indiscriminate air strikes against opposition-controlled areas, prompting almost all residents of these areas to flee. Others, particularly those from minority groups, also fled their homes fearing attacks from armed opposition groups. Many camped in the countryside or sought refuge in caves; others went to live with relatives or left the country. Refugees from elsewhere resident in Syria, including Palestinian refugees, faced particular difficulties in accessing safety…By the end of the year, thousands of people were living in camps beside the border with Turkey in dire conditions…”

But the 2013 Amnesty International Report also noted that in 2012, “in February, the government held a referendum on a new Constitution that ended the Baath party’s long monopoly on power, but fell short of opposition demands for sweeping political reforms,” “parliamentary elections were held 90 days later,” and Assad’s Baath regime “announced general amnesties in January and October” of 2012.

(end of section 2 of part 28)

A People's History of Syria--Part 28--section 1: January to December 2012 Period

According to a Mar.9, 2012 article, titled “The Bloody Road to Damascus: The Triple Alliance’s War on a Sovereign State,” by The Arab Revolt and the Imperialist Counterattack author and Binghamton University Sociology Professor James Petras, there was “clear and overwhelming evidence” by 2012 in Syria “that the uprising to overthrow President Assad of Syria” was “a violent, power grab led by foreign-supported fighters who have killed and wounded thousands of Syrian soldiers, police and civilians, partisans of the government and its peaceful opposition;" and that “the outrage expressed by politicians in the West and Gulf State and in the mass media, about the ‘killing of peaceful Syrian citizens protesting injustice’” was “cynically designed to cover up the documented reports of violent seizure of neighborhoods, villages and towns by armed bands, brandishing machine guns and planting road-side bombs.” In Professor Petras’s view:

“The assault on Syria is backed by foreign funds, arms and training….An objective analysis of the political and social composition of the principle armed combatants in Syria refutes any claim that the uprising is in pursuit of democracy for the people of that country. Authoritarian fundamentalist fighters form the backbone of the uprising. The Gulf States financing these brutal thugs are themselves absolutist monarchies…The armed groups infiltrate towns and use population centers as shields from which they launch their attacks on government forces. In the process they force thousands of citizens from their homes, stores and offices which they use as military outposts. The destruction of the neighborhood of Baba Amr in Homs is a classic case of armed gangs using civilians as shields and as propaganda fodder in demonizing the government.

"These armed mercenaries have no national credibility with the mass of Syrian people… The kings and emirs of the Gulf States bankroll these fighters. Turkey provides military bases and controls the cross-border flow of arms and the movement of the leaders of the so-called `Free Syrian Army’. The US, France and England provide the arms, training and diplomatic cover. Foreign jihadist-fundamentalists, including Al Qaeda fighters from Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan, have entered the conflict…This is an international conflict pitting an unholy triple alliance of NATO imperialists, Gulf State despots and Muslim fundamentalists against an independent secular nationalist regime. The foreign origin of the weapons, propaganda machinery and mercenary fighters reveals the sinister imperial, `multi-national’ character of the conflict….

“…The Western backed militias have seized neighborhoods by force of arms, destroyed oil pipelines, sabotaged transportation and bombed government buildings. In the course of their attacks they have disrupted basic services critical to the Syrian people including education, access to medical care, security, water, electricity and transportation. As such, they bear most of the responsibility for this `humanitarian disaster’…A majority of Syrians prefer a peaceful, negotiated settlement and reject mercenary violence. The Western-backed Syrian National Council and the Turkish and Gulf States-armed `Free Syrian Army’ flatly rejected Russian and Chinese calls for an open dialogue and negotiations which the Assad regime…accepted. NATO and Gulf State dictatorships are pushing their proxies to pursue violent `regime change’, a policy which already has caused the death of thousands of Syrians. US and European economic sanctions are designed to wreck the Syrian economy, in the expectation that acute deprivation will drive an impoverished population into the arms of their violent proxies…”

According to Thomas Plofchen’s May 14, 2014 timeline on The Cairo Review of Global Affairs website, on Jan. 23, 2012 the Al-Nussra Front (Jabbat Al-Nursa)—a Syrian opposition armed rebel group affiliate of the Al-Qaeda group—announced its formation. And in an article by Eric Schmitt, titled “C.I.A. Said to Aid in Steering Arms to Syrian Opposition,” the New York Times reported the following on June 21, 2012:

“A small number of C.I.A. officers are operating secretly in southern Turkey, helping allies decide which Syrian opposition fighters across the border will receive arms to fight the Syrian government, according to American officials and Arab intelligence officers.

The weapons, including automatic rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, ammunition and some antitank weapons, are being funneled mostly across the Turkish border by way of a shadowy network of intermediaries including Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood and paid for by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the officials said.

“The C.I.A. officers have been in southern Turkey for several weeks…The Obama administration has said it is not providing arms to the rebels, but it has also acknowledged that Syria’s neighbors would do so.

“The clandestine intelligence-gathering effort is the most detailed known instance of the limited American support for the military campaign against the Syrian government. It is also part of Washington’s attempt to increase the pressure on President Bashar al-Assad of Syria…The United States and its allies have…turned to…aiding allied efforts to arm the rebels to force Mr. Assad from power.

“…`C.I.A. officers are there and they are trying to make new sources and recruit people,’ said one Arab intelligence official who is briefed regularly by American counterparts…The struggle inside Syria has the potential to intensify significantly in coming months as powerful new weapons are flowing to both the Syrian government and opposition fighters…Spokesmen for the White House, State Department and C.I.A. would not comment on any intelligence operations supporting the Syrian rebels, some details of which were reported last week by The Wall Street Journal…

“The State Department has authorized $15 million in nonlethal aid, like…communications equipment, to civilian opposition groups in Syria…What has changed since March is an influx of weapons and ammunition to the rebels. The increasingly fierce air and artillery assaults by the government are intended to counter improved coordination, tactics and weaponry among the opposition forces, according to members of the Syrian National Council and other activists.

“Last month, these activists said, Turkish Army vehicles delivered antitank weaponry to the border, where it was then smuggled into Syria….The United States, these activists said, was consulted about these weapons transfers….The Syrian National Council, the main opposition group in exile, has recently begun trying to organize the scattered, localized units that all fight under the name of the Free Syrian Army into a more cohesive force…”

(end of part 28--section 1)

A People's History of Syria--Part 27: May to December 2011 Period

According to an article by Sibel Edmunds that was posted on Nov. 21, 2011 on the www.boilingfrogspost.com website, in late April or May 2011 a “joint U.S.-NATO secret training camp in the U.S. air force base in Incirlik, Turkey, began operations…to organize and expand the dissident base in Syria,” “weekly weapons smuggling operations” were “carried out with full NATO-U.S. participation since” May 2011 and, subsequently, deserters from the Baath regime’s army such as “Col. Riad al-Assad” and “several other high-ranking” defecting “Syrian military and intelligence officials” were then “added to operations’ headquarters in the U.S. base.”

Coincidentally, according to a timeline of Syria’s civil war by Thomas Plofchan that was posted on May 14, 2014 on The Cairo Review of Global Affairs website, on July 29, 2011 “defectors from the Syrian Army announced the formation of the Free Syrian Army, led by former Col. Riad Al-Assad;” and in 2011 James Gelvin’s The Arab Uprisings observed that “Syrian opposition leaders” said “that, should they remove Bashar al-Assad from power, they will reorient Syria toward the United States and the West and away from Iran.”

So, not surprisingly, in 2011 “the United States and the European Union both imposed their own escalating sets of sanctions on Syria.” On Aug. 17, 2011, for example, the Obama Administrations “Executive Order 1358” banned “Syrian oil imports and new U.S. investments in Syria and” blocked Syrian “government property in the United States,” according to Thomas Plofchan’s timeline on The Cairo Review of Global Affairs website.

According to a May 13, 2013 internet article by Musa al-Gharbi, “Wikileaks cables reveal that the U.S.” government “had begun cultivating opposition groups against the al-Assad regime, inside Syria and around the world, as early as 2006” and “these policies continued under” the Obama Administration. As an Apr. 18, 2011 Reuters article, titled “U.S. secretly backed Syrian opposition: report,” noted, The Washington Post reported on Apr. 17, 2011 that the U.S. “State Department has secretly funded Syrian opposition groups, according to diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks” and “the cables show that the State Department has funneled as much as $6 million since 2006 to a group of Syrian exiles to operate a London-based satellite channel, Barada TV, and finance activities inside Syria.”

According to the Apr. 17, 2011 Washington Post article by Craig Whitlock:

“The London-based satellite channel, Barada TV, began broadcasting in April 2009 but has ramped up operations to cover the mass protests in Syria as part of a long-standing campaign to overthrow the country’s autocratic leader, Bashar al-Assad…Barada TV is closely affiliated with the Movement for Justice and Development, a London-based network of Syrian exiles….The channel is named after the Barada River, which courses through the heart of Damascus…

“The U.S. money for Syrian opposition figures began flowing under President George W. Bush…in 2005. The financial backing has continued under President Obama...The cables indicate money was set aside at least through September 2010. While some of that money has also supported programs and dissidents inside Syria, The Washington Post is withholding certain names and program details at the request of the State Department...The State Department declined to comment on the authenticity of the cables or answer questions about its funding of Barada TV…

“Syrian exiles in Europe founded the Movement for Justice and Development. The group, which is banned in Syria, openly advocates for Assad’s removal. U.S. cables describe its leaders as `liberal, moderate Islamists’ who are former members of the Muslim Brotherhood…Several U.S. diplomatic cables from the embassy in Damascus reveal that the Syrian exiles received money from a State Department program called the Middle East Partnership Initiative. According to the cables, the State Department funneled money to the exile group via the Democracy Council, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit….Edgar Vasquez, a State Department spokesman, said the Middle East Partnership Initiative has allocated $7.5 million for Syrian programs since 2005. A cable from the embassy in Damascus, however, pegged a much higher total — about $12 million — between 2005 and 2010.

“The cables report persistent fears among U.S. diplomats that Syrian state security agents had uncovered the money trail from Washington….”

According to Musa al-Gharbi’s May 13, 2013 internet article, “as conflict erupted in Syria” after March 2011 “the U.S. attempted to create a shadow government (the Syrian National Council), comprised largely of expatriates, pro-Western ideologues, and Washington insiders, handpicked years before;” but “due to America’s obvious imprint, both this government and its successor enjoy little credibility with the Syrian people or the opposition forces on the ground” and “even should Bashar be deposed, it seems implausible that `a football dad from Texas’—Ghassan Hitto, the Syrian-American IT Executive from Dallas who is now the SNC’s prime minister—will end up governing Syria.” In Musa al-Gharbi’s view:

“As with Libya and Iraq, the U.S. believed Syrians loathed Bashar, the rebellion was popular, and the regime’s collapse was inevitable and imminent. In fact, none of these were true. Yet the U.S. designed their Syrian strategy around these falsities, relying on half-measures and `light footprints,’ believing these would be sufficient to topple the regime. They interfered with negotiations within Syria, saying there could be no dialogue until Bashar resigned. As a result, U.S. involvement in Syria propagated and escalated the violence, rather than stopping it.”

According to a 2012 Amnesty International human rights group report, Assad’s undemocratic Baath regime responded in 2011 to street protests that called for the democratization of Syrian society, the relinquishment of power by Assad or the overthrow of the Baath regime in the following repressive ways:

“Government forces used lethal and other excessive force against peaceful protesters who took to the streets in unprecedented numbers to demand political reform and the fall of the regime…More than 4,300 people reportedly died during or in connection with the protests and during funerals of demonstrators, most apparently shot by members of the security forces, including snipers. Tanks were used in military operations in civilian residential areas….The protests spread rapidly as government forces tried to quell the protests by brute force, including by using snipers to shoot into peaceful crowds while claiming that shadowy `armed gangs’ opposed to the government were responsible for the violence.”

But the 2012 Amnesty International Report also noted that in 2011:

“…Bashar al-Assad announced various reforms in response to the protests. In April, he lifted the national state of emergency that had been in force continuously since 1963, abolished the notoriously unfair Supreme State Security Court that had jailed thousands of critics and opponents of the government, and decreed that some members of the Kurdish minority should receive Syrian citizenship…A new Peaceful Assembly Law was introduced under which only demonstrations `properly licensed’ in advance by the authorities are considered lawful. In March, June and November, the President granted five separate amnesties for different categories of prisoners; among those freed were prisoners of conscience and people detained during the protests, although the vast majority of such detainees remained behind bars. Laws covering new Parties, elections and the media were passed in August [2011]...”

(end of part 27)

A People's History of Syria--Part 26: March to May 2011 Period

The initial incident which sparked a new wave of resistance by opposition political groups in Syria in 2011 to the undemocratic Baath regime of Bashar Assad was the arrest on Mar. 6, 2011 of ten to fifteen Syrian children under the age of 16 in Daraa, Syria—for spray painting “Down with the regime [nizan]” on a wall—by local Syrian police.

Only about 200 to 350 people had initially joined a “Day of Rage” demonstration in Damascus on Mar. 15, 2011 in which Syrian political opposition groups demanded that Assad’s Baath regime rescind the Emergency Law of 1963 and release all remaining Syrian political prisoners. But when the families of the arrested schoolchildren in Daraa then held a street protest on Mar. 17, 2011 to demand the release of the ten schoolchildren, local Syrian security forces “opened fire” and killed several of the protesting family members, according to James Gelvin’s The Arab Uprisings; and, in response to the shooting down of these non-violent Syrian protesters, the following events happened in Syria after Mar. 17, 2011, according to the same book:

“…The next day [Mar. 18, 2011], their funeral procession brought out 20,000 demonstrators who chanted anti-government slogans and attacked government buildings…Protests erupted the same day far to the north in the coastal city of Banias…Protests soon spread to other cities including Latakia, Homs, Hasaka, and Qamishli, as well as to the small towns surrounding Damascus…”

Initially, the Baath regime cited the Emergency Law of 1963 as its legal basis for using its security forces and soldiers to attempt to violently suppress the initially non-violent opposition political groups’ street demonstrations of the post-March 2011 uprising in Syria, by overruling the Syrian constitution and detaining and arresting demonstrators indefinitely.

But on Apr. 16, 2011, the Baath regime agreed to repeal the Emergency Law of 1963, as demanded by the Syrian opposition groups coordinating the post-March 2011 Syrian uprising. In addition, to win more popular support for the Baath regime from Syria’s Kurdish minority, Assad’s regime also had agreed on Apr. 6, 2011 to grant citizenship “to 250,000 Kurds who, it maintains, had crossed into Syria from Turkey illegally in the early sixties,” according to The Arab Uprisings.

The same book also characterized the Syrian opposition political groups which were seeking to democratize or overthrow Assad’s Baath regime during 2011 in the following way:

“The opposition in Syria consists of 5 main components. The…spontaneous, mostly peaceful crowds…A variety of pro-democracy, pro-human rights, and social media groups…These groups have not been particularly successful at mobilizing substantial numbers…The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood…has been present only at opposition conferences outside Syria because it is illegal in Syria…Once the uprising broke out, however, the brotherhood declared its support for pro-democracy protesters, and called for a multiparty democracy.

“The final group that has participated in the uprising is deserters from the [Syrian] army and their support networks. Included among the latter are merchants and smugglers, who have armed those who abandoned the [Syrian] military without weapons…and the Turkish government, which allowed deserters to establish a cross-border presence in Turkey…”

The Arab Uprisings indicated why some of the lower-level conscripted Syrian soldiers—without needing any U.S.-NATO encouragement—might have started to desert from the Syrian Army after the post-March 2011 uprising against the Baath regime began: “Sunni conscripts, repelled by the level of violence their Alawite officers were willing to inflict on protesters, began to defect from the army in increasing numbers.”

(end of part 26)

A People's History of Syria--Part 25: 2004 to February, 2011 Period

Although Bashar Assad’s Baath regime released over 100 more Islamist and other political prisoners—“some of whom had been held since 1987,” according to Alan George’s Syria: Neither Bread nor Freedom—in November 2001, the economic performance of the Baath regime apparently did not improve between 2001 and 2011, especially after the regime began introducing in 2005 an “economic reform plan” for Syria that the International Monetary Fund [IMF] had devised. As James Gelvin’s The Arab Uprisings: What Everyone Needs To Know recalled in 2011:

“…In 2005 he [Bashar Assad] introduced what he called a `social market economy.’…In large measure, the IMF drew up the blueprint for the `social market economy.’…Syrians found two aspects of the `social market economy’ repellent: first, the…replacement of…across-the-board subsidies for food and fuel, with targeted subsidies; second, privatization of government assets…Privatization led…to crony capitalism…Rami Makhloaf, Bashar al-Assad’s first cousin…is not only principal owner of the mobile communications giant Syriatel; his empire also includes holdings in real estate, transport, banking, insurance, construction and tourism…”

The economic situation of many people in Syria also deteriorated more between 2005 and 2011 because of droughts in Syria. As the same book observed, “Syria was self-sufficient in wheat production until 2006, after which there were 4 consecutive years of drought.”

By early 2011 large numbers of people in Syria were more poverty-stricken than in previous years and large numbers of Syrian youth were apparently still unemployed under the undemocratic Baath regime of Bashar Assad. The Arab Uprisings described the economic situation experienced by people in Syria in early 2011 in the following way:

“In Syria, youths under 25 constitute 59 percent of population…Youths in Syria make up the bulk of the unemployed: 67 percent of young males and 53 percent of young females in the labor pool are unemployed. On the average, 81 percent of [Syrian] college graduates spend at least 4 years looking for work before landing their first job…Thirty percent of Syrians currently live below the poverty line, 11 percent below the subsistence level. This is because in Syria about 48 percent of household income is spent on food…The `new poor’…includes the 1.3-1.4 million Syrians who have left the countryside for nearby cities because of the drought…”

So, not surprisingly, large numbers of impoverished or unemployed Syrian youth were apparently willing to join the non-violent demonstrations organized by political opposition groups which called for the democratization of Syrian society in the months after March 2011—after people in Tunisia and Egypt showed--in late 2010 and the first two months of 2011--that street demonstrations and strikes by students, youth and workers could eventually force the leaders of undemocratic and unpopular regimes (like former Egyptian president Mubarak) to relinquish power.

(end of part 25)

A People's History of Syria--Part 24: 2000 to 2003 Period

After the leader of the undemocratic, post-1970 Baath military coup regime from 1970 to 2000—Hafez al-Assad—died on June 19, 2000, his son—Bashar al-Assad—became the Baath Party secretary-general on June 17, 2000 and the next president of Syria on July 17, 2000. Coincidentally, “after the elder Assad died,” the Syrian Baath regime’s “parliament amended the constitution, reducing the minimum age for” Syrian “president from 40 to 37—which was, not coincidentally, Bashar’s exact age,” according to James Gelvin’s The Arab Uprisings: What Everyone Needs To Know; and “soon after acceding to power, Bashar oversaw the brief `Damascus Spring,’ a period of time when the government took a rather benign view of unsupervised political organization and full expression,” according to the same book.

Yet according to Alan George’s Syria: Neither Bread nor Freedom, under the Baath regime’s economic and political system in 2001, the unemployment rate in Syria was between 25 and 30 percent and the illiteracy rate for Syrian females was still 39 percent. The same book also noted that in 2000 around 74 percent of Syria’s then-population of 16.7 million people were Sunni Muslim in religious background, around 12 percent were Alawi Muslim in religious background, around 3 percent were Druse, around 10 percent were Christian—mostly Greek Orthodox—in religious background, and 9 percent of Syria’s population was Kurdish--including 200,000 to 360,000 stateless Kurds.

In addition, around Damascus was a community of 400,000 Palestinian refugees; and between 1946 and 2000 the number of Syrians of Jewish religious background who still lived in Syria had decreased from 30,000 to only 100 by 2000. 

But Syria: Neither Bread nor Freedom also observed that at the beginning of the 21^st-century the Baath regime was still “secular” and included “key figures from all of Syria’s main communities,” although “its core, especially in the security and military service,” was still Alawi in religious background. The same book also indicated how the Baath regime apparently initially responded positively to some of the Syrian secular political opposition’s demands for democratization of Syrian society, after Bashar al-Assad succeeded his father as Syrian president, during the `Damascus Spring” of 2000:

“In the second half of 2000…the [Syrian] authorities took a series of steps which were seen as a response to the rising clamor for reform. In June and July [2000] dozens of Islamists and leftists were freed from prison. Most were members of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood that had openly confronted the regime in the early 1980s, and the Communist Action Party. On Nov. 15 [2000] [Bashar] Assad issued a decree releasing 600 political prisoners, of whom 380 were Muslim Brotherhood members and most of the rest were leftists, including 22 from the Communist Action Party…Four days later Assad decreed the closure of the notorious Mezzeh prison in Western Damascus;…built by the French in the 1920s. On Nov. 22, 2000 a sweeping general pardon for non-political prisoners was announced…”

According to Syria: Neither Bread nor Freedom, at the beginning of the 21^st-century, Syria was still “essentially an agricultural country,” with the main crops grown being cotton, wheat, barley, fruit and vegetables; and 32 percent of Syria’s labor force was involved in farming. In addition, “half of the 16.7 million Syrians in 2001 were rural dwellers,” according to the same book; and “textile and food processing plants” were still “the main section of Syrian manufacturing,” in which only 13 percent of Syria’s labor force worked, compared to 27 percent of the Syrian labor force that worked in Syria’s public sector.

But between the early 1980s and 2000, the oil industry of Syria began to play a more important role in Syria’s economy. As Syria: Neither Bread nor Freedom observed in 2003:

“…The most significant recent structural change in the economy…has been the expansion of oil output following the development of major new oilfields in the Euphrates valley in the 1980s. Oil revenues in recent years have accounted for 60 to 70 percent of export and 40 to 50 percent of the [Syrian] state budget.”

During the month following the release of some of Syria’s political prisoners and the general pardon for Syria’s non-political prisoners by Bashar Assad’s Baath regime in November 2001, the Baath Party’s Regional Command then announced on Dec. 2, 2000, “the approval of plans to establish the country’s first private bank and a stock market and to float the local currency, marking the end of a 40-year state monopoly on banking and foreign exchange transactions” in Syria, according to the same book.

By 2001, however, Bashar Assad’s Baath regime began repressing and arresting some Syrian civil society and Syrian ngo activists in Syria. Yet Syria: Neither Bread nor Freedom characterized the level of popular support which then existed for Syrian civil society groups and ngos in 2003 in the following way:

“…However much one may admire the ideals and courage of the [Syrian] civil society movement, it would be foolish to pretend that it commands wide support. The regime denigrates the activists as a tiny minority of middle-class intellectuals, and plainly they are—although that does not mean that their ideas will not eventually triumph. For most Syrians, the priority is the daily struggle to make ends meet. It is on its economic performance rather than its record on democracy or human rights that the regime is most vulnerable.”

(end of part 24)