A People's History of Syria--Part 12: 1943 to 1946 Period

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)

A People's History of Syria--Part 8: 1926 to 1927 Period

According to Michael Provence’s The Great Syrian Revolt and The Rise of Arab Nationalism, by the end of 1925 the anti-imperialist Syrian “rebels had the committed support of vast numbers of the Syrian population, both in the countryside and in the capital” and “people that the French identified as bandits and criminals were identified by their compatriots as national heroes…” So in early 1926 “declarations, manifestos and signed petitions began to appear all over” the Syrian city of “Aleppo,” according to Philip Khoury’s Syria and The French Mandate. But then, according to the same book, the following happened in Aleppo on Jan. 10, 1926:

“…A crowd of 1,500 persons gathered at the Great Mosque in Aleppo and shops throughout the Muslim quarters closed to protest the arrests [of 43 leaders of opponents of continued French rule in Syria]. A procession…made its way to Serail [where the arrested leaders had been imprisoned]…When the crowd tried to help a number of prisoners to make an escape, a company of mounted troops with bared sabers charged the unarmed mob, which turned to flight only to face a burst of machine-gun fire from the nearby Citadel…French machine gunners killed 15 people and seriously wounded another 60…”

And in the Spring and Summer of 1926, a counter-offensive by the French troops succeeded in crushing the anti-imperialist Syrian nationalist revolt. According to The Great Syrian Revolt and The Rise of Arab Nationalism, this mass-based Roaring Twenties revolt against French imperialist government rule in Syria ended in the following way:

“…It ended with the…reassertion of government control over the devastated countryside, district by district and village by village. Most of the hundreds of insurgents named and sentenced in abstentia by government courts fled into exile. The truly anonymous rebel masses melted back into their ruined village and urban quarters.”

As Syria and The French Mandate noted:

“… [French] General Andrea launched an assault on Sawnda’…]and] on Apr. 25, 1926, French forces recaptured the Druze capital…Six thousand armed Druzes led the resistance in Suwayda’. The assault took the French 6 hours to complete; approximately 1,000 Druzes were killed, while the French lost 89 men and another 310 were wounded.”

Then, in May 1926, according to the same book, the French army killed a lot of civilians while crushing the anti-imperialist Syrian nationalist revolt in Damascus by using the following methods:

“…The third prong of the French Army’s spring offensive [in 1926] pointed at the Maydan quarter [of Damascus]…The attack finally came on May 7 [1926]…The number of houses and shops destroyed during the aerial bombardment…were estimated at well over 1,000. The death toll was equally staggering, between 600 and 1,000. The vast majority of casualties were unarmed civilians, including a large number of women and children; only 50 rebels were reported killed in the attack. Afterwards, the [French imperialist] troops indulged in pillaging and looting…The French assault made a formerly busy quarter of 30,000 people [in Damascus] a virtually deserted ruin…By May 17, 1926, calm had at long last been restored to Damascus.”

The June 2, 1926 issue of The London Times also estimated that the French army’s bombardment of Damascus in May 1926 destroyed 1,200 houses and 400 shops and killed 1,000 people.

A few months later, on July 18, 1926, according to Syria and The French Mandate, “the French launched their…offensive on the Ghuta” area of Syria “with 5,000 troops,” “encountered some resistance” by anti-imperialist Syrian nationalist rebels, and “inflicted heavy casualties.” The same book also noted that “an estimate of the number killed in the 3 days of heaviest fighting” between July 18 and July 21, 1926 in Ghuta “was 1,500, of which 400 were reportedly rebels,” while “reliable estimates put the figure at 200 French troops killed.”

Syria and The French Mandate summarized the results of the French government’s decision to use its military in Syria to crush the 1925-1927 “Great Syrian Revolt,” in the following way:

“The Great Revolt was a popular and wide-spread anti-imperialist uprising with a pronounced nationalist orientation…The number of Syrians killed, wounded, and uprooted was staggering. At least 6,000 rebels were killed, over 100,000 persons were left homeless, and one-fifth of the homeless flooded into Damascus from devastated rural areas around the Syrian capital. Sections of Damascus were burnt-out shells, the result of French air bombardments and artillery shelling. Hama had been similarly devastated…

“…The French government…had increased the number of French troops in Syria and Lebanon from 14,000 in the Summer of 1925 to 50,000 by early 1926…The Great Revolt took 2 years to crush…Some 2,000 French troops and auxiliaries were either killed or reported missing. The figure can be added to the 6,700 French troops who had been killed trying to pacify Syria between the {French military] occupation of 1920 and the revolt…”

(end of part 8)

A People's History of Syria--Part 7--section 3: 1925 to 1926 Period

Although “the French bombardment of Damascus” in October 1925 “ended any organized mobilization” of anti-imperialist Syrian insurgents in Damascus, in response, the “insurgency expanded every day in the regions surrounding Damascus” and “thousands of Syrian men and women took part in the revolt” although, according to Michael Provence’s The Great Syrian Revolt and The Rise of Arab Nationalism, French “mandatory forces continued to bomb and shell numerous villages, neighborhoods, and suburbs in the region of Damascus.” As the same book also observed:

“Resistance shifted back to the…surrounding countryside. The destruction of their city failed to pacify the population with fear and led to an outraged expansion of rebel activity…Guerrilla bands soon gained control of the countryside on all sides of the city…The southern region was completely under the control of the insurgents. It took more than a year and massive reinforcements of troops and equipment for the mandatory power to regain effective control of the countryside of Damascus…The aims of the insurgents were clear: the expulsion of France and the independence of Syria.”

In Damascus on Dec.15, 1925, Syrian nationalist politicians who were not involved directly in armed revolt against French troops in the countryside surrounding Damascus then also demanded the following from French imperialist government representatives in Syria: 1. a general amnesty; 2. reunification of the country so that it would again include all of Beirut, all of Lebanon and all of Greater Syria; 3. a native Syrian government in Syria with real authority, instead of just a figurehead Syrian government that mainly served French imperialist interests; 4. the election of a Constituent Assembly to frame a constitution for a new, independent Syrian state; and 5. the establishment of a limitation for how long French government rule in Syria would last.

The mandate authorities in Syria of the French government, however, rejected all of these demands and, according to The Great Syrian Revolt and The Rise of Arab Nationalism, outside of Damascus the following happened:  

“…Towns and villages from Mount Lebanon east to the Anti-Lebanon range and south to the border with British-ruled Palestine experienced destruction from the air. The 1925 revolt was the first time in history that civilian populations were subjected to daily systematic aerial bombardment…By late December [1925] scores of villages in the area around Damascus had been bombed. Aerial bombardment was punishment for…suspicion of harboring rebels…”

(end of section 3 of part 7)

A People's History of Syria--Part 7--section 2: 1925 to 1926 Period

In response to the spread of the anti-imperialist revolt in Syria, the French imperialist government’s “Foreign Legion troops and [French General] Andrea’s Eighteenth Tirailleurs occupied al-Musayfra” on Sept. 15, 1925 and “expelled and killed the remaining inhabitants of the village,” according to Michael Provence’s The Great Syrian Revolt and the Rise of Arab Nationalism. Then, on Sept. 17, 1925, “French airplanes bombed” the Syrian “rebels 27 times in 3 hours” as the Syrian rebels “retreated;” and “300 to 400” anti-imperialist Syrian rebels were killed, according to the same book. In addition, after French General Andrea ordered the captured insurgents “to stack” the “bodies of their dead comrades and the dead of al-Musayfra,” he ordered the captured insurgent prisoners to be “executed.”

But on Oct. 4, 1925, a Syrian “insurgent force of hundreds occupied the central Syrian town of Hama,” which in 1925 “was mandate Syria’s third-largest town with 80,000 inhabitants;” and “by 11:30 that night the battle was over, and Hama was in” Syrian “rebel hands,” according to The Great Syrian Revolt and the Rise of Arab Nationalism. On the morning of Oct. 5, 1925, however, “the French struck back” and subjected “the town to continuous aerial bombing” which “laid waste to most of the town bazaars,” according to the same book. And as a result of the Oct. 5, 1925 bombing of Hama by the French military, 344 mostly civilian Syrians were killed, including many Syrian women and children; and the French imperialist’s bombs and mandate troops destroyed 115 shops in Hama.

The Great Syrian Revolt and the Rise of Arab Nationalism also described how the French troops next attempted to end the revolt in the Ghuta area of Syria:

“The French…executed nearly 100 villagers in the Ghuta, many of them in their fields and orchards…Soldiers brought their corpses to Damascus as trophies, and they brought a number of prisoners as well. Some of the young male prisoners were publicly shot in Marja Square, the central square of Damascus. Mandate authorities left 16 mutilated corpses on display in a row for most of the day.”

On Sunday, Oct. 18, 1925, however, the French colonial authorities’ Syrian “police and gendarmes laid down their weapons and abandoned their posts in all the neighborhoods of Damascus,” enabling the anti-imperialist Syrian insurgents to occupy Damascus “without serious opposition,” according to The Great Syrian Revolt and The Rise of Arab Nationalism. But the same book also described how the French military responded later on that same day to the liberation of Damascus by anti-imperialist Syrian rebels:

“The mandate authority…decided on its response…The bombardment of the city began at around 5 o’clock on Sunday afternoon. The authority gave no warning to anyone…The bombardment lasted 2 full days. Entire quarters of Damascus were flattened. Nearly 1,500 were killed…”

According to Philip Khoury’s Syria and The French Mandate:

“Before dawn, on Oct. 18 [1925], a band of 40 [rebel] men…penetrated the Shaghar quarter [of Damascus] from the east…A little later in the day a second band of 200 Druze insurgents…invaded the Maydan [section of Damascus]…At midday, the French sent tanks through the city and its bazaar. Mobs erected barricades to slow their pace, making them easier targets for snipers…

“French reinforcements joined the Army stationed in the northern suburbs…By sunset, the bulk of the French Army was stationed along position north of the old city, covering the government buildings, the Hejaz Railway Station, and the Citadel. Then, at 6 p.m….the French used artillery and airplanes to shell the southern area of Damascus. The bombardment continued intermittently throughout the night…

“The next morning…all troops were withdrawn from the old city…to the northern line. From 10 o’clock until noon the following day, the bombing continued mercilessly…with huge explosive shells striking in all quarters from the central bazaars down to the middle of the Maydan [section of Damascus].

“The death toll after 2 days of shelling was high. The French…newspaper, L’Humanite’, circulated figures provided by the Damascus Municipality of 1,416 killed, including 336 women and children…French bombs and artillery ruined much of the area between the two great commercial arteries, Suq al-Hamidiyya and Suq Midhat Pasho…”

(end of section 2 of part 7)