38.2.5: The Syrian Civil War

Assad Regime

Syria became an independent republic in 1946, although democratic rule ended with a coup in 1949, followed by two more coups the same year. A popular uprising against military rule in 1954 saw the army transfer power to civilians. The secular Ba’ath Syrian Regional Branch government came to power through a successful coup d’état in 1963. For the next several years, Syria went through additional coups and changes in leadership. In 1971, Hafez al-Assad declared himself President, a position that he held until his death in 2000. Immediately following al-Assad’s death, the Parliament amended the constitution, reducing the mandatory minimum age of the President from 40 to 34, which allowed his son, Bashar al-Assad, to become legally eligible for nomination by the ruling Ba’ath party. In 2000, Bashar al-Assad was elected President by referendum, in which he ran unopposed, garnering the alleged 97.29% of the vote according to Syrian government statistics.

Bashar, who speaks French and English and has a British-born wife, inspired hopes for reform, and a Damascus Spring of intense political and social debate took place from mid-2000 to mid-2001. The period was characterized by the emergence of numerous political forums or salons where groups of like-minded people met in private houses to debate political and social issues. The phenomenon of salons spread rapidly in Damascus and to a lesser extent in other cities. The movement ended with the arrest and imprisonment of ten leading activists who had called for democratic elections and a campaign of civil disobedience.

Syria’s Social Profile

Syrian Arabs, together with some 600,000 Palestinian Arabs, make up roughly 74 percent of the population. Syrian Muslims are 74 percent Sunnis (including Sufis) and 13 percent Shias (including 8-12 percent Alawites), 3 percent are Druze, and the remaining 10 percent are Christians. Not all of the Sunnis are Arabs. The Assad family is mixed. Bashar is married to a Sunni with whom he has several children, but is affiliated with the minority Alawite sect. The majority of Syria’s Christians belonged to the Eastern Christian churches. Syrian Kurds, an ethnic minority making up approximately 9 percent of the population, have been angered by ethnic discrimination and the denial of their cultural and linguistic rights as well as the frequent denial of citizenship rights.

Socioeconomic inequality increased significantly after free market policies were initiated by Hafez al-Assad in his later years, and it accelerated after Bashar al-Assad came to power. With an emphasis on the service sector, these policies benefited a minority of the nation’s population, mostly people who had connections with the government and members of the Sunni merchant class of Damascus and Aleppo. This coincided with the most intense drought ever recorded in Syria, which lasted from 2007 to 2010 and resulted in widespread crop failure, an increase in food prices, and a mass migration of farming families to urban centers. The country also faced particularly high youth unemployment rates.

The human rights situation in Syria has long been the subject of harsh critique from global organizations. The rights of free expression, association, and assembly were strictly controlled. The country was under emergency rule from 1963 until 2011 and public gatherings of more than five people were banned. Security forces had sweeping powers of arrest and detention. Authorities have harassed and imprisoned human rights activists and other critics of the government, who were often detained indefinitely and tortured while under prison-like conditions. Women and ethnic minorities faced discrimination in the public sector. Thousands of Syrian Kurds were denied citizenship in 1962 and their descendants were labeled “foreigners.”

Breakout of Civil War

Following the Arab Spring trends across the Arab world, in March 2011 protesters marched in the capital of Damascus, demanding democratic reforms and the release of political prisoners. Security forces retaliated by opening fire on the protesters. The protest was triggered by the arrest of a boy and his friends for writing in graffiti “The people want the fall of the government” in the city of Daraa. The protesters burned down a Ba’ath Party headquarters and other buildings. The ensuing clashes claimed the lives of seven police officers and 15 protesters. Several days later in a speech, President Bashar al-Assad blamed “foreign conspirators” pushing “Israeli propaganda” for the protests.

Initially, the protesters demanded mostly democratic reforms, release of political prisoners, an increase in freedoms, abolition of the emergency law, and an end to corruption. Already by April, however, the emphasis in demonstration slogans shifted slowly towards a call to overthrow the Assad regime. Protests spread widely to other cities. By the end of May, 1,000 civilians and 150 soldiers and policemen had been killed and thousands detained. Among the arrested were many students, liberal activists, and human rights advocates.

In July 2011, seven defecting Syrian Armed Forces officers formed the Free Syrian Army (FSA), originally composed of defected Syrian military officers and soldiers aiming to overthrow the Assad government with united opposition forces. In August, a coalition of anti-government groups called the Syrian National Council was formed. The council, based in Turkey, attempted to organize the opposition. The opposition, however, including the FSA, remained a fractious collection of political groups, longtime exiles, grassroots organizers, and armed militants divided along ideological, ethnic and/or sectarian lines. Throughout August, government forces stormed major urban centers and outlying regions, and continued to attack protests. By September 2011, Syrian rebels were engaged in an active insurgency campaign in many parts of Syria. By October, the FSA started to receive active support from the Turkish government, which allowed the rebel army to operate its command and headquarters from the country’s southern Hatay Province close to the Syrian border and its field command from inside Syria.

The scene of the October 2012 Aleppo bombings, for which al-Nusra Front claimed responsibility. The fighting has caused damage to entire cities, including both civilian quarters and numerous historic buildings. All six UNESCO World Heritage Sites in the country have been destroyed. Destructive effects of the conflict are caused by shelling, looting, and rebel occupation.

Fighting Factions

The war is currently being fought by a complex network of factions. A number of sources have emphasized that as of at least late 2015/early 2016, the Syrian government was dependent on a mix of volunteers and militias rather than the Syrian Armed Forces. The Syrian National Defense Force was formed out of pro-government militias. They act in an infantry role, directly fighting against rebels on the ground and running counter-insurgency operations in coordination with the army, who provides them with logistical and artillery support. The shabiha are unofficial pro-government militias drawn largely from Syria’s Alawite minority group. Since the uprising, the Syrian government has been accused of using shabiha to break up protests and enforce laws in restive neighborhoods.

The Christian militias in Syria and northern Iraq are largely made up of ethnic Assyrians, Syriac-Arameans, and Armenians. Sensing that they depend on the largely secular government, the militias of Syrian Christians fight both on the Syrian government’s side and with Kurdish forces. The Eastern Aramaic-speaking Assyrians in north eastern Syria and northern Iraq have formed various militias (including the Assyrian Defense Force, Dwekh Nawsha, and Sootoro) to defend their ancient towns, villages, and farmsteads from ISIS. They often but not always fight in conjunction with Kurdish and Armenian groups.

In February 2013, former secretary general of Hezbollah Sheikh Subhi al-Tufayli confirmed that Hezbollah was fighting for the Syrian Army. Iran, on the other hand, continues to officially deny the presence of its combat troops in Syria, maintaining that it provides military advice to Assad’s forces in their fight against terrorist groups. Since the civil uprising phase of the Syrian Civil War, Iran has provided the Syrian government with financial, technical, and military support, including training and some combat troops. The number of Afghans fighting in Syria on behalf of the Syrian government has been estimated at 10,000-12,000 while the number of Pakistanis is not known. In September 2015, Russia’s Federation Council unanimously granted the request by President of Russia Vladimir Putin to permit the use of the Russian Armed Forces in Syria.

The armed opposition consists of various groups that were either formed during the course of the conflict or joined from abroad. In the northwest of the country, the main opposition faction is the al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra Front allied with numerous other smaller Islamist groups, some of which operate under the umbrella of the Free Syrian Army (FSA). The designation of the FSA by the West as a moderate opposition faction has allowed it to receive sophisticated weaponry and other military support from the U.S., Turkey, and some Gulf countries that effectively increases the total fighting capacity of the Islamist rebels. In the east, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, known more commonly as ISIS), a jihadist militant group originating from Iraq, made rapid military gains in both Syria and Iraq. ISIL eventually came into conflict with other rebels, especially with al-Nusra, leaders of which did not want to pledge allegiance to ISIL. As of 2015, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey were openly backing the Army of Conquest, an umbrella rebel group that reportedly includes an al-Qaeda linked al-Nusra Front and another Salafi coalition known as Ahrar ash-Sham and Faylaq Al-Sham, a coalition of Muslim Brotherhood-linked rebel groups. Also, in the northeast local Kurdish militias have taken up arms and fought with both rebel Islamist factions and government loyalists.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are an alliance of Arab, Assyrians, Armenian, Kurdish, and Turkmen militias fighting for a democratic and federalist Syria. They are opposed to the Assad government, but have directed most of their efforts against Al-Nusra Front and ISIL.

A number of countries, including many NATO members, participate in the Combined Joint Task Force, chiefly to fight ISIL and support rebel groups perceived as moderate and friendly to Western nations such as the Free Syrian Army. Those who have conducted airstrikes in Syria include the United States, Australia, Bahrain, Canada, France, Jordan, The Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom. Some members are involved in the conflict beyond combating ISIL. Turkey has been accused of fighting against Kurdish forces in Syria and Iraq, including intelligence collaborations with ISIL in some cases.

Consequences

Estimates of deaths in the Syrian Civil War, per opposition activist groups, vary between 321,358 and 470,000. In April 2016, the United Nations and Arab League Envoy to Syria put out an estimate of 400,000 deaths.

A UN fact-finding mission was requested by member states to investigate 16 alleged chemical weapons attacks. Seven of them have been investigated (nine were dropped for lack of “sufficient or credible information”) and in four cases the UN inspectors confirmed use of sarin gas. The reports, however, did not blame any party for using chemical weapons. Many, including the United States and the European Union, have accused the Syrian government of conducting several chemical attacks, the most serious eing the 2013 Ghouta attacks. Before this incident, UN human rights investigator Carla del Ponte, who has been investigating sarin gas use in Syria, accused the opposition of the government of using sarin gas in 2013.

Formerly rare infectious diseases have spread in rebel-held areas, brought on by poor sanitation and deteriorating living conditions. The diseases have primarily affected children and include measles, typhoid, hepatitis, dysentery, tuberculosis, diphtheria, whooping cough, and the disfiguring skin disease leishmaniasis. Of particular concern is the contagious and crippling poliomyelitis.

The violence in Syria caused millions to flee their homes. In March 2015, Al-Jazeera estimated 10.9 million Syrians, or almost half the population, were displaced. As of March 2017, the UNHCR reports 6.3 million Syrians are internally displaced and nearly five million registered as Syrian refugees (outside of Syria). Most Syrian refugees have sought safety in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, and Iraq. In 2017, the United Nations (UN) identified 13.5 million Syrians requiring humanitarian assistance (in 2014, the population of Syria was about 18 million).

Wounded civilians arrive at a hospital in Aleppo during the civil war in Syria, October 2012. Aleppo is an ancient city and one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, possibly since the 6th millennium BCE. During the Battle of Aleppo, the city suffered massive destruction and has been the worst-hit city in the Syrian Civil War. In December 2016, the Syrian government achieved full control of Aleppo following a successful offensive.

According to various human rights organizations and United Nations, human rights violations have been committed by both the government and the rebels, with the “vast majority of the abuses having been committed by the Syrian government.” The UN commission investigating human rights abuses in Syria confirms at least nine intentional mass killings in the period 2012 to mid-July 2013, identifying the perpetrator as Syrian government and its supporters in eight cases and the opposition in one. By late 2013, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network reported approximately 6,000 women have been raped since the start of the conflict,  with figures likely to be much higher given that most cases go unreported. According to some international lawyers, Syrian government officials could face war crimes charges in the light of a huge cache of evidence smuggled out of the country showing the systematic killing of about 11,000 detainees. Most of the victims were young men and many corpses were emaciated, bloodstained, and bore signs of torture. Experts note this evidence is more detailed and on a far larger scale than anything else that has yet emerged from the crisis. In 2014, Human Rights Watch released a report detailing government forces razing to the ground seven anti-government districts in the cities of Damascus and Hama. Witnesses spoke of explosives and bulldozers used to knock down buildings. Satellite imagery was provided as part of the report and the destruction was characterized as collective punishment against residents of rebel-held areas. UN also reported that armed forces of both sides of the conflict blocked access of humanitarian convoys, confiscated food, cut off water supplies, and targeted farmers working their fields. UN has also accused ISIS forces of using public executions, amputations, and lashings in a campaign to instill fear. Enforced disappearances and arbitrary detentions have also been a feature since the Syrian uprising began. In February 2017, Amnesty International published a report which accused the Syrian government of murdering an estimated 13,000 persons, mostly civilians, at the Saydnaya military prison.

As the conflict has expanded across Syria, many cities have been engulfed in a wave of crime as fighting caused the disintegration of much of the civilian state and many police stations stopped functioning. Rates of theft increased, with criminals looting houses and stores. Criminal networks have been used by both the government and the opposition during the conflict. Facing international sanctions, the Syrian government relied on criminal organizations to smuggle goods and money in and out of the country. The economic downturn caused by the conflict and sanctions also led to lower wages for shabiha members. In response, some shabiha members began stealing civilian properties and engaging in kidnappings. Rebel forces sometimes rely on criminal networks to obtain weapons and supplies. Black market weapon prices in Syria’s neighboring countries have significantly increased since the start of the conflict. To generate funds to purchase arms, some rebel groups have turned towards extortion, theft, and kidnapping.

As of March 2015, the war has affected 290 heritage sites, severely damaged 104, and completely destroyed 24. All the six UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Syria have been damaged. Destruction of antiquities has been caused by shelling, army entrenchment, and looting at various tells, museums, and monuments. A group called Syrian Archaeological Heritage Under Threat is monitoring and recording the destruction in an attempt to create a list of heritage sites damaged during the war and to gain global support for the protection and preservation of Syrian archaeology and architecture. In 2014 and 2015, following the rise of the ISIL, several sites in Syria were destroyed by the group as part of a deliberate destruction of cultural heritage sites.

Attributions

• The Syrian Civil War
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