The Fall of the Assad Regime in Syria, Part One
—Jason
Listen here: https://www.spreaker.com/episode/hwts-265-fall-of-the-assad-regime-part-1--63261505
The Assad regime in Syria officially ended on 8 December 2024 following almost 54 years in power. The rise, and subsequent fall, of the Assad family’s hold on power came about via a series of military coups beginning in the 1960s. The fate of hundreds of thousands of Syrians was determined by the ruthless father-to-son dynasty.
In order to tell that story, we must start with the creation of modern Syria. The modern state of Syria was created following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War (1914-1918) and was a complicated entity from the start. The Entente Powers of Great Britian and France had signed the Sykes-Picot Agreement on 16 May 1916; this effectively split up Ottoman territory into separate spheres of influence for the victorious powers. Those people living within the region were not privy of this information until the war ended and the concept of self-determination (where local populations determine their borders, government structures, etc.) was immediately stripped from them.
Syria and Lebanon fell within the French zone, and as the mandate power for this region, Paris was not willing to give Syrians much say in their own government. Rebellion against the French broke out between 8 March and 25 July 1920 but was quickly crushed. Syrian nationalists crowned Faisal bin al-Hussein bin Ali al-Hashemi (later King Faisal I of Iraq) in opposition to the French control. When Great Britian and the United States did not intervene on the side of the Syrians, Faisal and his forces were forced to surrender. Great Britian offered Faisal the kingship of newly created Iraq in hopes of quelling further Arab anger.
Making the situation even more fraught Syria was, and remains, a country made up of numerous ethnic and religious groups with many competing objectives. The current Syrian population is estimated to be roughly 74% Sunni, 13% Shi’ite, 10% Christian, and the remainder Druze, Alawite, and Yezidis. During French rule, the Syrian Christian community was used to help the colonial administration, which caused tensions between them and the Muslims and Alawites.
French rule was heavily contested as Syrian nationalists encouraged more rebellions throughout the 1920s. The Great Syrian Revolt began on 22 July 1925 with the Battle of al-Kafr and was officially declared on 23 August 1925 by Druze leader Sultan Pasha al-Atrash. The resulting violence quickly spread to the cities of Damascus, Homs, and Hama. Despite winning two battles, the Syrians faced an impossible fight as France rushed thousands of soldiers to put down the revolt. Large-scale fighting ended around the spring of 1927, when the French suppressed it by shelling Damascus. The French sentenced Sultan al-Atrash to death, but he had escaped with some of the rebels to Transjordan (modern Jordan) and was eventually pardoned; he returned to Syria in 1937.
Following the Great Syrian Revolt, the French began to accept the prospect of a gradually independent Syria with caveats that favored the European power. Effectively, France would still control the Syrian Mountains, as well as the Syrian economy, and foreign affairs. When news of these terms reached Syria, the country fell again into a series of riots and demonstrations against French rule and the Syrian administration of Muhammad 'Ali Bay al-'Abid.
Fearing a repeat of Syrian Revolt, the French government approached Hashim al-Atassi, a senior nationalist and parliamentarian, who had called for a sixty-day strike in protest. Al-Atassi traveled to Paris on 22 March 1936 and the resulting treaty called for immediate recognition of Syrian independence as a sovereign republic, with full emancipation to be granted gradually over a 25–year period. Al-Atassi returned to Syria in triumph on 27 September 1936 and was elected President of the Republic in November.
The Franco-Syrian Treaty guaranteed the incorporation of previously autonomous Druze and Alawite regions into the region of Syria, but not Lebanon, with whom France had signed a similar treaty in November. The treaty also promised curtailment of French intervention in Syrian domestic affairs as well as a reduction of French troops, personnel and military bases in Syria. Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in Germany and subsequent rearmament programs led France to refuse to ratify the Syrian treaty.
However, the events of World War II seriously disrupted the flow of the 25-year gradual independence. On 22 June 1940, the French were defeated by Nazi Germany and most of mainland France was occupied; the remaining independent parts of the empire were administered by the collaborationist Vichy French Government. French North Africa, Madagascar, Syria, and Lebanon were effectively neutral following Paris’s defeat.
Hitler, however, was courting Arab leaders in the Middle East to revolt against British rule. Rebellions against British rule in Palestine and Iraq had previously raged in the 1920s and 1930s. Rashid Ali al-Gaylani, an Iraqi nationalist politician, staged a coup against the pro-British government on 2 May 1941. This led British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to authorize operations against the Kingdom of Iraq and subsequent occupation of Vichy-held Syria and Lebanon beginning on 8 June 1941 until the end of the war in Europe on 7 May 1945.
The Levant Crisis, also known as the Damascus Crisis, the Syrian Crisis, or the Levant Confrontation, was a military confrontation that took place between British and French forces in Syria in May 1945 soon after the end of World War II in Europe. French troops had tried to quell nationalist protests in Syria against the continued occupation of the Syria and Lebanon by France. Between 19 and 29 May, French forces killed around 1,000 Syrian rebel nationalists throughout the country.
On 29 May, French troops stormed the Syrian parliament and tried to arrest the President Shukri al-Quwatli and the speaker Saadallah al-Jabiri but both managed to escape. The French burned, bombarded the building and then cut off Damascus's electricity. They also sealed off Syria's borders with Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon. Having managed to escape via a British armored car, Quwatli sent an urgent request to Prime Minister Winston Churchill for British troops to intervene.
A very real threat of British and French troops clashing in Syria loomed on the horizon. General Bernard Paget, who commanded the British Ninth Army had a large force sitting in Transjordan and threatened to enter Syria if the violence did not end. At the same time, the French Army of the Levant in the region had been severely weakened when most of the Syrian soldiers in the French army had deserted their posts and taken up arms with the rebels.
The French then called for reinforcements and used their air force to drop bombs on suspected areas of resistance. At the same time (25 April 1945) the Syrian Prime Minister Faris al-Khoury was at the founding conference of the United Nations in San Francisco, presenting Syria's claim for independence and ordered the fighting to stop. American President Harry Truman supported both al-Khoury and the United Nations against France.
When French President Charles De Gaulle ignored Churchill’s warnings about the rising Syrian death toll, the British intervened without waiting for American approval. On 1 June 1945, British forces crossed the Transjordan-Syrian border and raced to Damascus. The French commander realized he was greatly outnumbered and ordered his troops to retreat to their barracks. De Gaulle was forced to sign a humiliating cease fire with the Syrians.
Continuing pressure from Syrian nationalist groups and the British intervention forced the French to withdraw completely from Syria to Lebanon by the end of July 1945 and by this time the Mandate had effectively been erased. In October, the international community recognized the independence of Syria and Lebanon, and they were admitted as founding members of the United Nations. On 19 December 1945 an Anglo-French agreement was eventually signed – both British forces from Syria and French forces from Lebanon were to be withdrawn by early 1946.