Syria
Karsh, The Soviet Union and Syria
Efraim Karsh, The Soviet Union and Syria: The Asad Years (London: Routledge, 1988.)
Human Rights Briefing
The bus arrived at Tadmur Prison where the military police awaited us. The warders helped us off the bus, whipping us brutally and mercilessly until we were all out. They removed the handcuffs and blindfolds, and then we were taken into a courtyard overlooked by the prison’s offices, where our names were registered. All the while we were being whipped from all sides. Then we were taken through a metal door into a courtyard, known as the torture courtyard. The military police searched our clothes. One by one we were put into the dullab (tire), and each person was beaten between 200 and 400 times on his feet…. When they had finished beating us, we were lined up in single file.
Sivan, Radical Islam; Kepel, Muslim Extremism in Egypt
Emmanuel Sivan, Radical Islam: Medieval Theology and Modern Politics (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985.)
Gilles Kepel, Muslim Extremism in Egypt: The Prophet and Pharoah (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985.) Translated from the French by Jon Rothschild.
Document: Testimony of a Syrian Censor
He does not wish to be identified because he believes that the long arm of the Syrian government will reach him anywhere in the world. Take his word for it, he said, he knew them better than anyone else. He ought to; he was once a censor in the ministry of information. He is also a writer and journalist who would like to continue as such.
Censorship as we know it now in Syria began with the first coup d’état in 1947 which was led by Husni al-Zaim, and which was followed by a series of coups. With each new coup, censorship increased and was further tightened. By the time of the last coup, led by Hafiz al-Asad in 1970, the whole state structure was transformed into one large intelligence and censorship apparatus.
Khoury, Urban Notables and Arab Nationalism
Philip S. Khoury, Urban Notables and Arab Nationalism: The Politics of Damascus, 1860-1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
This is the latest in a growing number of studies which discuss the social origins of political ideologies in the Arab East. Philip Khoury sets himself the task of explaining the development of Arab nationalism in Damascus through an analysis of the class-conditioned political behavior of the city’s landowner-bureaucrats.
Sulayman, al-Masalla
Nabil Sulayman, al-Masalla [The Obelisk] (Beirut: Dar al-Haqa’iq, 1980).
Portraits of Syrian Workers
The Dibs Company Workers
The United Arab Industrial Company, also known as the Dibs Company after its former owners, is a large textile factory located in a rural area south of Damascus. It was founded in 1955 and nationalized in 1964. In 1980, it had 1,660 employees, nearly 200 of whom were administrative personnel. The following portraits of Dibs Company workers are drawn from interviews conducted in March 1980.
The Syrian Working Class Today
What is the position of the working class in contemporary Syrian society? I posed this question ten years ago and concluded at the time that one could only speak of a “class in formation.” [1] I was criticized then for having even raised such a question. After all, pre-capitalist relations of production in Syria have disintegrated, the artisan class has declined, there are increasing numbers of large capitalist enterprises employing an ever larger number of workers, and a class-based trade union movement emerged a half century ago. So it is tempting to conclude that the working class has in fact established itself as an actor on the Syrian social scene. But its obvious weakness in contemporary politics and society continues to raise a number of questions.
Palestinians in Damascus
The assault on the Palestinian camps in Beirut ended in a truce signed in Damascus on June 17, which reflected the failure of Amal to defeat the Palestinian militias. The agreement also reflected Syria’s role in the battles by having the Palestinian side represented only by the Palestine National Salvation Front (PNSF). MERIP correspondent Mark Garfield visited Damascus in early July and spoke about the situation with Jamil Hilal, a member of the central committee of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) and with Taysir Qubba, deputy head of political relations for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The DFLP is not affiliated with the PNSF; the PFLP is.
Syria and Lebanon, 1943-1975
In their final years under French rule, Syria and Lebanon entered into an unprecedented cooperation in order to free themselves from France. The liberal nationalist regimes in Damascus and Beirut reinforced one another’s demands for complete political independence without first having to sign treaties with France. Support for their position came from Britain, the United States and, in 1945, from the newly founded Arab League. The Syrian nationalists appeared to have reconciled themselves to the integrity and sovereignty of a greater Lebanon, as established by the French in 1920, although after independence Damascus refused to establish formal diplomatic relations with Beirut.
Syria in Lebanon
Preeminent influence in Lebanon, both on the central government and between the various factions, is critical for Syria from defensive and offensive strategic perspectives, whatever one considers Syria’s role to be in the pan-Arab arena or in the Arab-Israeli conflict.
From the defensive perspective, Lebanon covers the entire western flank of southern Syria, offering immediate access to the Damascus and Homs regions. Since Lebanon’s descent into chaos beginning in 1975, Syria has been particularly concerned about three contingencies:
Cadres, Guns and Money
Hafiz al-Asad marched into the Palace of the People in Damascus on the evening of January 6, 1985 to convene the eighth regional congress of the Baath Party. The standing ovation which greeted his entrance was immediately broadcast to the most remote corners of Syria by a platoon of television cameras.
Books on Syria
John F. Devlin, Syria: Modern State in an Ancient Land (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1983).
Robert Olson, The Baath and Syria, 1947-1982 (Princeton, NJ: The Kingston Press, 1982).
Umar F. Abd-Allah, The Islamic Struggle in Syria (Berkeley, CA: Mizan Press, 1983).
The Syrian Labor Movement
‘Abdallah Hanna, al-Haraka al-‘Ummaliyya fi Suriya wa Lubnan, 1900-1945 [The Labor Movement in Syria and Lebanon, 1900-1945] (Damascus: Dar Dimashq, 1973).
The Importance of Bodyguards
Power in Syria today is based on a narrow, clannish system, more akin to what was described by Ibn Khaldoun 600 years ago than to Western “development theory” or “the non-capitalist road.” Family ties are key. In the Syrian army, a major can have more power than a general if he is, like Mouin Nasif, a relative of Rif‘at al-Asad. Muhammad Makhloud, director of the State Tobacco Monopoly, is the president’s brother-in-law. A veritable army is responsible for protecting him and his family. His house in Damascus has practically been transformed into a fortress.
Social Bases for the Hama Revolt
During the first week of February 1982, serious fighting broke out in Syria between residents of the north-central city of Hamah and the government’s armed forces. A Syrian army raid on a number of buildings that were suspected of being hideouts for local cells of the Muslim Brothers precipitated the fighting. Brother militants foiled this operation using modern small arms and grenade launchers. They then attacked a variety of government installations, including the Hama headquarters of the police and of the Baath party, and also the airfield on the edge of town. By the second day of the fighting, mosques in some sections of the city broadcast calls for a general uprising against the country’s rulers.
Salah al-Din al-Bitar’s Last Interview
We met in Paris, in a small office on the top floor of a building looking out on a courtyard. Salah al-Din al-Bitar answered my questions in what was to be his last recorded interview. The year before, he had founded al-Ihya’ al-‘Arabi, the publication named after the movement that preceded the Baath Party. He devoted all his energy to this new publication. His aim was to provide a forum on Arab unity, the goal to which he devoted his life. The son of a Sunni bourgeois family from Damascus, Bitar was deeply involved in the struggle for Syrian national independence. He saw this struggle as closely related to larger developments in the Arab world. Such was the ideological thrust of the Baath, which he founded with Michel ‘Aflaq.
Syria’s Muslim Brethren
Who are the Muslim Brethren in Syria? What is their significance socially? How are they related to Syria's social structure? What is the social meaning of their ideas and values? Are these ideas and values responses to distinguishable conditions and interests of one or more identifiable social groups? Are the Muslim Brethren, in other words, an incidental phenomenon or the organizational expression of a basic structural force? For the most part, this essay deals with these and related questions. It provides a tentative, exploratory interpretation, with some vivid and sharp images, rather than a thorough and refined picture of the movement.
