Inside Syria: The Backstory of Their Civil War and What the World Can Expect

“Fascinating and full of insights…. A welcome antidote to the flood of ill-informed blather that has deformed our understanding of this alarming crisis.”

—Stephen Kinzer, author of
Overthrow
and
All the Shah's Men

“Journalist Reese Erlich guides the reader through the labyrinth of Middle East history and politics that led to the Syrian Civil War. Since the fallout from that conflict has global ramifications, this well-written book is a must read.”

—Conn Hallinan, columnist for
Foreign Policy in Focus

“Read this book and you will receive an in-depth, objective, and truly fair understanding of what is taking place in the Middle East at this moment. We need Reese Erlich in the mass media.”

—Peter Coyote, actor, author of
Sleeping Where I Fall

“Well before the US invasion of Iraq, Reese Erlich's firsthand reporting challenged the official justification for that effort—and the mainstream media's failure to report on it accurately. Since then, Erlich has combined independent reporting with straightforward political analysis and expert media criticism.
Inside Syria
continues that important work. It parses that region's conflicts, considers the historical and geopolitical forces at work, and skips the usual forms of demonization and mystification. If the news from Syria doesn't make sense to you, read this book.”

—Peter Richardson, San Francisco State University, author of
A Bomb in Every Issue: How the Short, Unruly Life of Ramparts Magazine Changed America

“Erlich's work is a reliable astrolabe and an essential guide in navigating the shifting political winds of the Syrian war and regional conflict. Meticulously investigated.”

—Meghan Nuttall Sayres, editor of
Love and Pomegranates: Artists and Wayfarers on Iran

“The strength of the work lies in the interviews and firsthand observations that other types of analyses may lack.”

—Dr. Amir Sharifi, Department of Linguistics, California State University, Long Beach

Published 2014 by Prometheus Books

Inside Syria: The Backstory of Their Civil War and What the World Can Expect
. Copyright © 2014 by Reese Erlich. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Jacket design by Grace M. Conti-Zilsberger

Unless otherwise specified, all images in the photo insert are by Reese Erlich

Maps by William L. Nelson

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The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Erlich, Reese W., 1947–

Inside Syria : the backstory of their civil war and what the world can expect / Reese Erlich ; foreword by Noam Chomsky.

        pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-61614-948-2 (hardback) — ISBN 978-1-61614-949-9 (ebook)

1. Syria—History—Civil War, 2011– 2. Syria—Politics and government—2000– 3. Protest movements—Syria—History—21st century. 4. Political violence—Syria—History—21st century. I. Title.

DS98.6.E75 2014
956.9104'2—dc23

2014015840

Printed in the United States of America

Foreword

by Noam Chomsky

1.   The Uprising That Wasn't Supposed to Be

2.   Lawrence of Syria

3.   Treaties, Rebellions, and Independence: 1919–1946

4.   Wars and Coups—Then the Assads Arrive: 1947–2011

5.   The Uprising Begins

6.   Chemical Weapons, Military Offensives, and Stalemate

7.   Who Supports Assad?

8.   Why Iran Backs Syria

9.   Will the Kurds Have Their Way?

10.   Israel, Palestine, and Syria

11.   United States, Russia, and Outside Powers

Acknowledgments

Appendix 1. A Quick Guide to Syrian Politics and Terms

Appendix 2. Syria Timeline: Key Dates since World War I

Notes

Bibliography

Index

The Arab Spring uprisings of early 2011 were highly exciting events of historic importance. Despite setbacks, significant gains have been achieved, and I suspect they will be lasting—very likely a prelude of more to come.

In Tunisia, France was the dominant imperial power and supported the dictator strongly in ways that were a considerable embarrassment. A French cabinet minister was even vacationing in Tunisia while the popular uprising was expelling Ben-Ali. In Egypt, the dominant influences were the United States and the United Kingdom. Both supported the dictator, General Hosni Mubarak, until the very end.

They then followed the standard script when a favored dictator faces internal problems: support him as long as possible, and when it no longer is—particularly if the business classes and the army turn against him—ship him off somewhere. Then be sure to issue ringing declarations about your love of democracy, and try to restore the old system as fully as possible.

The United States supported the elected Muslim Brotherhood government of Mohammed Morsi, which, crucially, left the military pretty much in charge. When the military overthrew the government and took full control in July 2013, the United States supported it with the usual formulaic comments about democracy.

I was also excited about the uprising in Syria, although the vicious reaction of the Assad regime turned the early nonviolent demands for reform into a murderous civil war that is destroying the society. In
chapter 5
, Reese Erlich shows that the conflict remains one between the Assad regime and major sectors of the Syrian people. But the war has become much more complicated because of intensified fighting between Sunni, Alawites, Shia, and other religious and ethnic groups, and the intervention into the conflict of jihadi groups with their own varying agendas.

The Sunni-Shia split, of course, goes back to the founding days of Islam. The Alawites were an early offshoot of Shia Islam. Ottoman Turks and French colonialists sought to exploit religious differences to maintain their rule. When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, the occupation exacerbated low-level religious tensions, which have since been tearing Iraq apart and spread to the entire region—Syria in particular.

There is perhaps some hope for a negotiated, political settlement of the Geneva type. Russia and the United States could bring pressure to bear to end the civil war. It is a very slim possibility, but it is actually the only one that I can see that has any hope of saving Syria.

From the beginning, as Erlich shows in chapters
10
–
11
, the United States and Israel have been wary of the Syrian uprising. Assad had, in fact, been relatively cooperative with the United States in recent years, sharing intelligence, absorbing huge numbers of people fleeing from the wreckage of the US invasion of Iraq, and generally conforming to US demands.

Interestingly, the United States and Israel did not undertake one fairly straightforward action that could have significantly helped the rebels. Israel could have mobilized its forces on the occupied Golan,
which would have compelled Assad to move forces to the south, relieving pressure on the rebels. Israel is quite happy to see Arabs murdering each other, as Erlich documents in
chapter 10
by interviewing Israeli analysts.

The United States has been helping expedite some arms flow to the rebels from the Gulf states and directly training selected rebels in Jordan, but otherwise not intervening extensively. The United States offered lukewarm support for UN negotiator Lakhdar Brahimi's Geneva peace initiative, the one (very thin) reed that might offer some hope of arresting Syria's plunge to catastrophe.

The US failure to bomb Syria after the chemical-weapons incident in August 2013 was highly significant. The Obama administration was unable to obtain virtually any international support. Even Britain wouldn't support it. Congress wasn't going to support the attack either, which would have left Obama completely out on a limb. So the Russian plan to dismantle Syria's chemical weapons was a godsend for Obama. It saved him from what would have been a very serious political defeat.

This would have been a perfect opportunity to ban chemical weapons in the entire Middle East. The Chemical Weapons Convention, contrary to the Obama administration position, does not refer just to use of chemical weapons; it refers to production, storage, or use of chemical weapons. Well, Israel has chemical weapons and has refused even to ratify the Chemical Weapons Convention.

The appropriate response would be to call for imposing the Chemical Weapons Convention throughout the Middle East, which would mean that any country that is in violation of that convention, whether it has accepted it or not, would be compelled to eliminate its chemical-weapons stores. Just maintaining those stores, producing chemical weapons—all of that is in violation of the convention. Of course, that would require that a US ally, Israel, give up its chemical weapons and permit international inspections. This should apply to nuclear weapons, as well.

The United States hasn't given up on possible future military action in Syria. In
chapter 11
, Erlich describes the various justifications offered for “humanitarian intervention.” Advocates argue that the Syrian Civil War is so horrific—with the possibility of hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths—that the international community must intervene with bombs and troops, though there is every reason to expect that as in other cases, the intervention would not be in the interest of the Syrians, but of those intervening, and would make the tragedy even worse.

Syria is a terrible atrocity. But there are much worse ones in the world. The worst atrocities in the past decade have been in eastern Congo, where maybe five million people have been killed. And the United States is indirectly involved. The government of Rwanda, which is a US client, is intervening massively, as is Uganda to an extent. It's almost an international war in Africa. How many people know about this? It's barely in the media. No one is calling for US humanitarian intervention to save people in the Congo.

The concept of “humanitarian intervention” is very old, and to
find genuine cases is no easy task. In the 1990s, the concept became very fashionable in the West. The jewel in the crown was Kosovo, but the traditional victims were unimpressed. The summit of the Global South, usually ignored or ridiculed in the West, condemned “the so-called ‘right' of humanitarian intervention” as another face for imperialism.

The outcomes of these grand enterprises and the reactions led to development of a new concept, “Responsibility to Protect,” or
R2P
. There are two crucially different versions of this doctrine. One was adopted by the United Nations in 2005. Apart from a shift of focus, it barely goes beyond well-established international law and practices.

A radically different version was produced by the commission headed by Gareth Evans, former Australian prime minister, who has since been hailed in the West as the guardian angel of R2P. The Evans version departs from the UN version in authorizing military action by regional groupings in the area of their jurisdiction, subject to subsequent acquiescence by the UN Security Council. The main regional grouping that can act this way is NATO, and it officially takes its area of jurisdiction as virtually the entire world.

It comes as no surprise that the traditional imperial powers adopt the Evans version and justify it on the grounds that the United Nations adopted R2P, concealing the fact that it is a crucially different version.

Finally, I would like to mention that Reese Erlich's reporting and investigative journalism around the world have been highly enlightening and, speaking personally, have been of great value to me in my own work on global issues and current affairs.

Noam Chomsky
May 27, 2014
Boston