03. the past, and especially the recent past

this is a rather long piece of text, to put what I am going to see the next ten days in some context, but if you like – I know some of you are not really interested – you can skip this, and go straight to the start of the actual trip.

There is a reason, of course, that everybody is so negative about traveling to Syria, and that is to do with its recent history. More about that later.

The earliest history of Syria is pretty well known, I suppose. Bordering Mesopotamia, the cradle of our civilization, it has been inhabited for  tens of centuries, mostly under the influence of ancient empires, like Egypt and long forgotten powers like the Hittites and the Hurrians, as well as Assyria – not to be confused with present-day Syria, which is an entirely different, unrelated entity. In fact, in the 9^th and 8^th centuries BC the Assyrians became the prime enemy of the Arameans, a collection of Semitic tribes that had gradually moved into what is now most of Syria, with their principle kingdom established in Damascus. Assyrian domination fell to Babylonian domination which fell to Persian domination – we are talking 539 BC now.

Another 200 years later it was Alexander the Great, who established Greek rule, which was short-lived because of his early death and internal strife. It took the Roman general Pompey to conquer the whole area in 64 BC, and establish the Roman province of Syria. Rome’s collapse created space for Byzantine Syria, administered from Constantinople, before the Islamic conquest in the 7^th Century AD – Damascus surrendered in 635 – created a new, Muslim overlord, the Umayyads dynasty. Who were in turn overthrown by Abbasid Caliphate, which also disintegrated, after which the Syrian territory was once again split up between foreign powers. The Seljuk Turks briefly came, and went again, then Saladin reunited the Syrian territory and annexed Egypt, and established the

Ayyubids dynasty, which was in turn overthrown by the Mamluks from Egypt. Things were not made easier by constant fighting with the Crusaders, who held territory along the coast, and by the Mongol sacking of Aleppo in 1260. Yet, the Mamluks held on to the 16^th C, after which the Ottoman gradually increased its power over Asia Minor, including Syria. And held on to that for the next 400 years.

Modern Syria

The First World War sees the defeat of the Ottomans, and the carve up of the Middle East by France and Brittain, through the infamous Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916. The newly created state of Syria, with the territories of Lebanon, Palestine and Transjordan stripped from it, becomes a French mandate. Syrian independence, declared in March 1920, was short-lived and ended four months later with the Battle of Maysalun, near Damascus, where the French comprehensively beat the Syrian independence forces.

So much for the early history, in which Syria was never a united, single entity for any prolonged period of time. The current borders, pretty artificial, have been in place for a little over one hundred years, and since 1946, when Syria was granted its independence, define the country.

Well, ‘define the country’ up to a certain extent. Firstly, Syria and Egypt jointly agreed on forming the United Arab Republic, in 1958. But dissatisfaction with Egyptian dominance of the new state led to its dissolution again, after a military coup in Syria in 1961. The restored territorial integrity of Syria was then compromised by Israel, which captured a significant part of the Golan Heights after the 1967 and 1973 wars, an occupation that continues until today. We are going to see some of that on this trip, I believe.

Politically, the independent country witnessed military coup after coup, after a brief democratic start. Then Hafez al-Assad, leading the military wing of the Ba’ath Party, grabbed power in 1970, and turned out to be the only coup plotter who had staying power, based on popularity amongst adherents to his anti-Israel policies and on harsh suppression of opponents – like the Muslim Brotherhood, which was savagely crushed in the city of Hama in 1982. Syria became, for the first time perhaps, a relatively stable country. Which is remarkable, given the many tensions and issues that play in the country, and in the wider Middle East: no Syrian history without the idea of Pan Arab unity, or the relationship with Lebanon and its civil war of the 1990s (or the assassination of its president Hariri in 2005), and what about the Kurdish minority, its links with the Turkish PKK, and thus tensions with neighbour Turkey, oh, and the rivalry with Iraq and its own Ba’ath party, and Iraq’s war with Iran, in which Syria supported Iran. And what about Sunni-Shiite rivalry, in which the Alawites – the Shiite breakaway group to which the Assad family belongs, as well as all of their trusted advisers surrounding the president – needed a fatwah from Ayatollah Khomeini to declare them true Muslims, because the presidency of Syria can only be fulfilled by a Muslim.

The 21^st century

Yet, in the more recent past that stability proved elusive. In 2000 Assad-pere was succeeded by Assad-fils, Bashar al-Assad, which initially looked to be a good thing, promising change and modernisation. However, when the Arab Spring also sparked protests in Syria, the government responded with its tested and trusted approach, use of excessive violence to break up demonstrations. But this time the opposition formed its own militias and fought back, leading to a full blown civil war which took years. Initial international efforts, by the Arab League and later by the UN Security Council, to broker a cease fire came to nought, and individual governments started to support rebel groups (eg Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia) or the Syrian government (Russia, Iran). But international military intervention never materialised, not even after the use of chemical weapons in 2013, despite calls from several corners. Direct support in the form of weapons and ammunition to rebel groups was also unpopular with western powers, because the opposition groups were far from united, and contained several Islamic factions, as well.

And indeed, from the power vacuum in neighbouring Iraq the Al-Qaeda Islamic militants morphed into ISIL, for us better known as ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria), and even though the Syrian Al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusrah Front – indeed then part of the collective anti-Assad opposition – distanced itself from ISIS, the group made rapid inroads into Syria, as well. With significant territory under control in Iraq and Syria it established its Islamic Caliphate in 2014. This then finally triggered international military response. The US launched air strikes in Iraq against ISIS later that year, and also materially supported Syrian Kurds in their fight against the Caliphate. In 2015 the Russians also got involved, allegedly to fight ISIS, but in the process also propping up Syrian government forces against the opposition militias – just in time, as Bashar al-Assad was then losing the battle. With Russian support, especially air strikes, the opposition was driven from Homs, Syria’s third largest city, late in 2015, and from Aleppo in 2016.

The attention then turned to ISIS, which held out to end 2017, but was – at least as territory is concerned – finally defeated from various sides, by a combination of Syrian Kurdish forces supported by the US, by the Nusrah Front, and by Assads troops, Russia-supported. Despite this common goal, several western countries bombed targets near Damascus and Homs in 2017, after further use of chemical weapons, and Israel bombed lots of Iranian military facilities in Syria in 2018.

 

Also in 2018, Syria, with Russian diplomatic support, began to retake areas held by opposition forces in the south-west of the country, by promising the fighters free passage to Idlib, the only area still firmly in the hands of the opposition – and protected by Turkey, who aimed for a buffer zone to avoid direct confrontation with the Syrian army. However, the Nusrah Front successor, HTS, i.e. another Islamic militant group, had become the dominant force in Idlib, which triggered another Syrian offensive in 2019, ultimately followed by another cease fire, brokered once again by Russia – Syrian and Turkey friend – in 2020. And since then it has been relatively calm at the battlefield in Syria. Well, except that Israel is still occasionally firing rockets at targets in Syria, but that is par for the course, I would say.

Of course, this piece of text is kind of the shortest possible summary of what is available on internet, and it is no doubt incomplete, in part incorrect, and a vast simplification in the first place. It comes from sources I personally trust – but are, and I realise this, also part of my, my Western, bubble (for instance, https://www.britannica.com/place/Syria/Media-and-publishing#ref214617). In the next few days, traveling through Syria, I do get quite a few alternative versions of Syrian recent history, which I will try to incorporate as much as I can, as impartially as I can.

next: the trip starts at the border.