The Baath regime in Syria has ended after a 13-year revolution. After the Syrian opposition forces captured the capital city of Damascus on Dec. 8, Bashar Assad, together with his family, left the country and went to Russia, one of its main supporters. The latest development is a great success for the revolutionary Syrian people, who the regime had oppressed for 61 years. I am quite optimistic about the future of the Syrian state since the Syrian people have a long tradition of peaceful coexistence. Today, I will briefly underline that culture's history and the Syrian people's anti-imperialism.

The Syrian people have been resisting against imperialism since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. They revolted against the French project of the traditional imperial policy of the divide-and-rule strategy in the country in the early 1920s. The French colonialists tried to establish a federal, sectarian and fragmented state by creating a Alawite state in the north, a Sunni state in the central part and a Druze state in the south of the country. However, the Syrians, including all these segments of the society, rejected the partition and rose against the French colonialist rule.

Later on, the French organized the country into five semi-autonomous administrative and political units. According to this organization, Aleppo and Damascus were left to the Sunni Arabs, Latakia to the Alawites, Alexandretta to the Turks and the Druze Mountain to the Druze. Thus, each unit was put under the control of a different ethnic group. Again, the Syrian people thought they had been betrayed by the French and therefore carried out many revolts throughout the 1920s. Unfortunately, unlike similar Turkish groups, the "Kuva-yi Milliye" forces established by the Turks against the foreign invasion in 1919, there was no coordination and common goal among these revolted groups. Therefore, they were all suppressed by the French.

After the official political independence in 1946, the Syrian state experienced many military coups until the Baath Party came to power in 1963. Then, the Baath regime, one of the most oppressive regimes in the world, was established in Syria.

The main principles of the Baath Party were unity (of the Arabs), freedom (from the imperialists) and socialism. The party tried to ensure the unity of the Arab people by underlining the Arab identity rather than the Syrian identity. It aimed to liberate the Arabs from foreign occupation and influence. Lastly, it intended the wealth and power to be taken from the hands of the nobles and transferred to the state. By doing so, it aimed to ensure social justice and peace. However, the Baath Party failed to become a party of the masses. It could only attract minorities, mainly due to its principles of social equality and secularism. It adopted secular Arab nationalism as the basic state ideology of the regime therefore pushing Islam into the background.

After Hafez Assad came to power, he controlled not only the army but also the media, economy, education and religion. In the end, all state institutions came under the control of the Baath party, which became the indoctrination centers that produced loyalty to the Assad regime. By gathering people from all segments of society under the roof of the party, Assad turned Syria into a Baath country.

Principles of the regime

The Assad regime can be defined in five headings. First of all, it was a personal regime. Hafez and his son Bashar transformed the regime into a “presidential monarchy.” Authority and power were concentrated in Assad’s person. His character, experience, ideology, political understanding and personality determined the general policy of the state. They were controlling the party as the general secretary, the entire administrative structure as the head of state and the army as the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. The basic criterion for appointments to strategically important positions is absolute loyalty and dependence on Assad.

Secondly, it was a familial and tribal regime. Members of the Kalbiyya tribe, one of the four main Alawite tribes in the country, occupied the most important positions in the state. Especially, the Assad and Makhlouf families held most of the key positions in the state’s basic institutions and bureaucracy.

It was based on sectarianism, religious identity and ethnicity. Hafez and Bashar were the only Alawite presidents of the state. Since Alawism played a major role in shaping the fundamental perspective of the state, the Assad regime was also perceived and described as an Alawite regime. The communal and/or sectarian solidarity among the Alawites, who particularly dominate the army and intelligence institutions, have been the fundamental determinants of the Syrian political system and therefore the continuation of Assad’s rule.

Many described the Assad regime as a “military-party partnership” regime due to the central position of the Baath Party, whose ideology determined the general rules of operation and political tendencies of the Syrian state. The Baath Party determined the ideological direction of the Assad leadership and ensured the establishment of an authoritarian, oppressive and disconnected administration with a top-down and militaristic discourse. It has been the sole institutional structure that ensures the administration’s communication with the people and legitimacy.

Its allies and opponents

The Baath regime was a political system consisting of groups that supported the Alawites and Baathists for pragmatic reasons and expectations. The most important supporters of the Alawites were religious minorities such as Christians and Druze. These groups, who thought based on individual and common interests, supported the Alawites out of fear of losing the relative comfort and security they had under the Baath regime. Apart from these, marginalized Sunni tribes, especially those living in rural areas and wealthy Sunnis centered in Damascus also supported the Baath administration. Knowing that he could not control every segment of society with just the Alawites, Assad created his own Sunni elite to increase his legitimacy, maintained good relations with the leading Sunni families in Damascus and gave them a place in the government to appease the Sunnis.

All in all, the Assad regime was allegedly pan-Arabic but it was a close ally of Iran, which is considered as one of the most imminent threats to the Arab world. During the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, the Assad regime supported Iran against its Baath brethren in Iraq. It continued to support the Iranian political perspective. It directly contributed to the creation of the Shiite crescent, the Iranian political project. Similarly, although it was part of the so-called resistance camp led by Iran, it had no problem with Israel. The Assad regime never made any serious attempt to liberate the Golan Heights, which has been under Israeli occupation since 1967.

In other words, the Assad regime was a personalistic and oppressive regime at the heart of the Middle East. The Syrian people, who paid a very high cost, have freed themselves from this totalitarian regime after a 13-year revolution. Last week, the Syrian people have awakened to a new dawn. I hope that the sun will rise over the country and bring a bright future for the Syrian people.

[Daily Sabah, December 18, 2024]