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Al Nakhlah – Tufts University 160 Packard Avenue – Medford, MA 02155-7082 USA – Tel: +1.617.627.3700 2 Al Nakhlah The Fletcher School Journal for issues related to Southwest Asia and Islamic Civilization Spring 2007 Lessons From the Interior: Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency in Syria Ethan Corbin The role of Islam in Syria today is changing In many ways, however, the Syrian Ba’th and a key instrument behind this change is the party, long the bulwark of regional secularism and President Bashar al-Asad. Hama, Halab, and champion of the near obsolete notion of pan- Homs, the traditional centers of conservative Islam Arabism, is beginning to show distinct signs of in Syria, are no longer the only arenas for outward change under the rule of President Bashar al-Asad. civil expression of adherence to the tenets of Islam. The son of the former dictator Hafiz al-Asad, who Syrian Islamic revival is evident from the city ruled Syria with an iron fist from 1970 to 2000, is centers of Damascus to Aleppo and from the plains proving to be a more skilled statesman than many 4 of Al-Hasaka into the mountains of the Jabal ad would like to think. President al-Asad’s Druze. Increased sensitivity to the state of the incorporation of a brand of state-sponsored Islam is 1 global umma, often referred to as re-Islamization, part of a concerted counter-insurgency effort that is is taking hold large and crosscutting swathes of the changing the character of Ba’thist Syria and 2 Middle East. Re-Islamization is particularly reaffirming the al-Asad family’s grip on power. prominent among the large numbers of In the decades following the 1963 Ba’th party economically and politically frustrated Arab coup and the subsequent Corrective Movement of youths increasingly concentrated in urban centers Hafiz al-Asad in 1970, designed to erase the Arab throughout the region. This fact can be troubling shame of the defeat in the Six Day War by seeking when taken in tandem with regional demographic strategic parity with Israel through a massive arms pressures, from which virtually no Arab state is build-up, Damascus tended to have an approach to spared. It is not uncommon in the region for over Islam that bordered on apathetic. The secular Ba’th fifty percent of a state’s population to be below the ruled the day, often citing the adherence to Islam 3 age of twenty. Syria is no exception to these and its inability to embrace modern science and technology as the reason behind the Arabs’ lack of increasingly interconnected trends. What is 5 exceptional about Syria is the fact that the changes success in the war. The embrace of Islam shifted to are happening under the watchful eyes of the more of a nod to cultural powerful and ardently secular members of the heritage than societal Syrian Ba’th party who have a long history of piety. Nonetheless, fear President al-Asad’s showing very little tolerance for any forms of certainly factored into incorporation of a expressions of Islam on a grand scale. public expressions of Islam following the brutal brand of state- crackdown in Hama of the sponsored Islam is part 1976 to 1982 Muslim Ethan Corbin, Fletcher MALD 2007, completed his Brotherhood-led Islamist of a concerted counter- MA in Middle Eastern History at Paris IV- La insurgency that left insurgency effort that Sorbonne in 2005. Currently, he is a second-year anywhere from 5,000 to student concentrating in International Security 10,000 dead at the hands is changing the Studies and Southwest Asia and Islamic Civilization. 6 of government forces. character of Ba’thist His current article is based upon his MALD thesis, Today, the streets of “Bashar Logic: State-Building in Syria and the Syria and reaffirming Damascus are replete Dilemmas of Succession.” He will begin his Ph.D. at with examples of these the al-Asad family’s the Fletcher School this fall. changes in the heretofore, grip on power © The Fletcher School – Al Nakhlah – Tufts University 160 Packard Avenue – Medford, MA 02155-7082 USA – Tel: +1.617.627.3700 2 Al Nakhlah relatively secular city. The number of restaurants and hateful speech has always been directed withdrawing alcohol from their offerings is on the outwards – most often at the United States or Israel. rise. Women are increasingly wearing headscarves Their continued growth in popularity has led to a from the souks in the heart of the medina to the new nickname for the state-endorsed clerics, 9 bourgeois neighborhoods. Previously nonexistent mushayikh al-sultan (Sultan’s Clergy). Salah Eddin traffic jams are a common Kuftaro best exemplifies this phenonemon. affair during the Friday call Kuftaro’s mosque, Abu Nour, is the most popular Syria is now the state 7 to prayer. These in Damascus, receiving over 10,000 weekly of Bashar and the phenomena in even the worshipers at his services. Kuftaro is considered the 10 manipulation of Islam most secular and hard-line most high profile of Bashar’s Clergy. The Syrian of states in the Middle East state also recently added religious programming is one of many tactics lead many to question not on television, is constructing new mosques, and is in the strategy of only the stability, but the establishing new religious schools – changes longevity of the ruling Ba’th deemed shocking by many Syrians given the regime survival 11 party as well. virulently secular history of the Ba’thist state. Much of the literature Still, in an historical review of what constitutes today on Syria portends the coming dissolution of authority and the degree of underlying legitimacy the state at the hands of long dormant sub-state it brings, President al-Asad’s increasing tolerance pressures such as political Islam. Bashar al-Asad of Islamic expression is a gamble that history shows faces a stiff challenge in the face of growing to be quite dangerous. A study of the waves of popular support for Islamic expression, but by all pressure upon the state by sub-state Islamic forces indications, the al-Asad regime remains resilient. reveals not only the strategy and goals of the President al-Asad’s real challenge lies in balancing Islamic insurgent forces but also the general between Islam and his discrete battle against the effectiveness of the Syrian state at quelling these subversive forces of political Islam. The tendency to forces within its borders. speak of a growing chance for civil disorder is often, in part, specious journalistic and government speculation that is easily exacerbated by the closed A HISTORY OF ISLAMIC REBELLION – nature of the regime, and fueled by the warnings of long-exiled members of the scattered Syrian PRECURSORS TO HAMA 8 Muslim Brotherhood. Articles on the handful of The history of the twentieth century in Syria violent attacks from Mezzah in 2004 to the most reveals that Islamic forces challenge the state with recently foiled attempt at the American Embassy surprising regularity. Beginning with the Arab on September 12, 2006 reveal the dual nature of revolt in 1925, a form of an Islamic-led insurgency these phenomena. In one sense, these attacks signal occurred approximately every twenty years. With a potential prelude to the rise of Islamist forces this in mind, it is not shocking to see the state so against the Syrian state; in another, they may mark involved in a pre-emptive counter-insurgency a clear measure of continuity between Hafiz al- campaign. After the collapse of the Ottoman Asad and his son Bashar in their effectiveness at Empire and during the contentious reorganization waging counter-insurgency campaigns. The of Syrian territorial and ideational identity, Islamic gradual shift in the nature of the regime from less groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood rose up as Ba’th-focused to a hybrid socialist state caught a force to challenge the state and, until their between gradual political and economic reform, decimation in 1982 at the hands of Hafiz al-Asad, measured acceptance of Islam and continued managed to improve the efficiency and regional realpolitik underscores the personal effectiveness of their campaigns with each effects the leader has upon the Syrian state successive attempt. structure. Syria is now the state of Bashar al-Asad In 1925, the Great Revolt broke out in the and the manipulation of Islam is one of many remote Jabal ad Druze among a geographically tactics in the strategy of regime survival. confined religious minority, the Druze, with A state-led embrace of Islam is in full effect in tenuous ties to the existing nationalist forces Syria. It is being used as a preemptive means of clamoring for the establishment of an independent countering the threat of renewed radical Islamic Arab state on the historic bilad al-sham. The bilad elements in the country, elements long dormant in al-sham, the ‘northern region’ in Arabic, but which the wake of the 1982 Hama massacre and the also encompassed the concept of Suriya al-Kubra subsequent draconian legal and security measures or, Greater Syria, in modern day Lebanon, Israel, taken against them. Throughout the past decade a Jordan as well as parts of Iraq and Turkey, was the vast network of state-sponsored imams have Arab nationalist conception of statehood in the appeared delivering a message of tolerant Islam, region for the post-Ottoman era. Following the © The Fletcher School – Al Nakhlah – Tufts University Spring 2007 3 lead of the Druze, the Turkoman captain in the support can be used to confront popular 16 Syrian Legion, Fawzi al-Qawuqi, led a rebellion resistance. Al-Quwatli sought to turn supporters out of Hama against the French occupying forces. against the clerics by publicly discrediting them.
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