Syria is a country with an unhappy history.
Since its establishment in 1920, it has been badly ruled by autocrats and foreign powers. Even before the modern version of Syria existed, it was dominated for thousands of years by foreign empires, Romans, Persians, Mamluks, Greeks.
Between 1924 and 1946 the country was under a French mandate, which made it effectively a colony of France. In 1958 it joined with Egypt in the Pan-Arab project to create a single Arab state: a deal which the Syrians quickly soured on as they soon realised Egypt viewed the new Arab Republic not as equals in a federation of equals but as Egyptian-dominated.
In 1963 Syria came under the control of the National Socialist Ba’ath party. The Ba’athists established a totalitarian state, with ruthless secret police who brutally crushed all dissent.
In 1971 internal fighting within the Ba’ath party brought the former minister of defence Hafez al-Assad to power. He established his family as the dominant force in Syria, complete with personality cult.
Al-Assad’s rise to power also cemented the establishment of an Alawite dominance over Syria. Alawites are an offshoot of Shia Islam, and whilst they regard themselves as Muslims, they are seen by some mainline Sunni and Shiite Muslims as unorthodox.
Alawites were placed in most important positions of power and trust, whilst people from the majority Sunni population were only allowed figurehead positions.
The Assad family ruled Syria in a style once common in the Middle East, with a supremely powerful, violent and often eccentric dictator funding their regime with oil money, in the image of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi.
Syria seemed set to continue on this road well into the 21st century when Bashar al-Assad, the son of Hafez, succeeded his father in 2000.
The 2011 Arab Spring protests spread to Syria, where resentment at the discrimination against the Sunni population was mixed with outrage at the regime’s corrupt inefficient governance. This resulted in mass protests.
The Assad government responded to these with incredible brutality, and soon the country descended into civil war. Many groups, especially Islamist groups who were long-time enemies of the Assad government, threw their support behind the rebels.
Between 2011 and 2024 an enormous number of people were killed in the civil war which also drew Iranian, Lebanese, Russian, Iraqi, American, French, Turkish, and Israeli forces into the conflict.
Arguably the most brutal of the participants in the war were the forces of Assad, who carried out atrocities on an unbelievable scale. You can read about these in the articles of my colleague Sara Gon here: https://dailyfriend.co.za/2025/01/14/defending-the-indefensible-south-africas-support-for-syria-at-the-un/ and RW Johnson here: https://www.biznews.com/thought-leaders/2025/01/05/rw-johnson-a-terrible-reckoning-syria.
Whilst initially the uprising against Assad was supported by people from all over Syrian society, including some Alawites, the dominance of the Alawites in the Assad government was exploited by some anti-government groups who encouraged violence against non-Sunni Syrians. Christians, and Alawites were often targeted by Islamists. In return Shia militias supporting Assad forcibly converted Sunnis and carried out massacres against non-Shiites. Non-Alawites were usually prevented from becoming officers in the Assadist army.
Iran in its support for Assad fans these flames, attempting to merge the Alawites into the Iranian Shiite community. It has purposely stoked violence against Sunnis to encourage retaliation against Shiites and Alawites, drawing Assad and Syrian Shiites closer to Iran.
Infamously, the radical Islamist group ISIS carried out genocidal actions against the Yazidi minority in north-eastern Syria during the civil war.
The war also had ethnic dimensions, with the Kurds, Turkomans, Assyrians and other minorities targeted by both the Assadist forces and Islamists who tended to be Arab-dominated.
Between March of 2011 and December of 2024, it is estimated that around 600 000 people were killed, with at least 300 000 of them being civilians. Six million Syrians were internally displaced and another six million fled the country, many going to Turkey and Europe.
By November of 2024 the conflict had been frozen for some time. Syrian rebels dominated by an Islamist group called Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a former al-Qaeda group which broke away in 2017, controlled the north of the country, with backing from Turkey. The Northeast of the country was controlled by the mainly Kurdish-supported Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Assad, however, controlled most of the country and was slowly being reintegrated back into the international community after being shunned during the height of the civil war.
In November 2024, HTS launched an offensive against Assad. It seemed to take some pressure off the front-line towns which were often bombed or shelled by Assad’s forces. To their surprise, the attack met little resistance. Assad’s regime had become dependent on foreign support from Russia and Iran. However, with Russia distracted in Ukraine and Iran’s forces greatly weakened by Israel, Assad’s army simply melted away before the rebel push.
On 8 December, Assad fled the country and brought to power the Islamist HTS in Damascus.
Since then, the world has held its breath for what comes next.
Fear abounds that HTS will establish some sort of Islamist Caliphate like the one created by ISIS in 2014.
Syrian Christians in particular worry that they may be the target of oppression, despite the support by many of them for the anti-Assad forces. As recently as 2018, HTS declared that Christians and other religious minorities would be allowed to continue their practices only if they paid the Jaziya tax, a traditional Islamic tax paid by non-Muslims under Islamic rule.
The first test of the new government came quickly when just before Christmas, armed masked Islamists set fire to a Christmas tree in a Christian neighbourhood. Syrian Christians took to the streets in protest, and HTS promised not only to bring the perpetrators to justice, but to restore the tree before Christmas Day. HTS blamed “foreign fighters” affiliated to another rebel militia for the attack.
A temporary retreat to save face or a genuine change in behaviour? It remains too early to say.
HTS should learn the lesson that Europe learned in the 1600s, that freedom of religion is not a “nice to have” but vital to hold diverse societies together. Freedom of religion in Europe emerged after the utter devastation of the wars of religion between Catholics and Protestants during the 1500s and 1600s. The most infamous of these was the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), which killed an estimated 25%-50% of Germany’s population.
Liberalism, that is, protection of the individual, the rule of law, democracy, federalism, freedom of religion and speech, private property, and so on, emerged not just from moral arguments and philosophical discussions, but rather as a way to hold together complex societies.
By ensuring protections for the individual, everyone can rest easy in the fact that even if you are not part of the dominant faction, whether defined by religion, ethnicity, political view, gender, and so on, being out of power is not that big a deal, as your rulers are constrained by what they can do to you, or how they can control you. It lowers the stakes of political contest, to avoid life-and-death struggles.
Hopefully, this practical lesson is something HTS will have learned after 13 years of brutal sectarian warfare. If HTS returns to its old ways and attempts to subjugate the Kurds, massacre the Christians, forcibly convert the Shiites and Alawites, they will simply engineer a new war, one which there is no guarantee they will win. Freedom of religion is not just in the interest of the Syrian people, but also the stability and survival of its new government, a lesson the nations of Europe learned the hard way in centuries past.
Federalism too is a vital tool in the project of bringing peace. Many of the factions in the civil war, even amongst the rebels, do not share HTS’s Islamist governance philosophy. Some are more secular, some represent minority religious factions, and others such as the Kurds have more radical left-wing views on society. Allowing individual regions genuine autonomy for different approaches to government with allow all of these groups to live together in relative peace. A centralised Sharia court in Damascus will not.
What about democracy?
I’m not naive; selling democracy to hardened autocrats is not an easy task. I doubt any region of Syria has anything like a free democratic system to look forward to in the short term even in the best-case scenario. However, simple protections for individuals, and a federal governance structure are very doable and will benefit not only minorities but also the long-term stability of HTS.
Maybe at some point down the line, Syria’s leaders can be convinced that democracy is a better way of solving internal power disputes than the alternatives, which tend to involve massacres and arrests.
Syria stands on a knife-edge: the civil war will resume in full if the country’s new government fails to learn the lessons of history, that only through Liberalism can you ensure the long-term peace, stability and prosperity of your nation.
[Image: Logo of Hay’at Tahrir al Shams – Wikipedia]
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