Letter from the President
It is an honor and
challenge to become president of the Syrian Studies Association at this time
when Syria is going through political upheaval.
Allow me to toot the horn
of the SSAÕs accomplishments and mention a few exciting innovations that are
taking place within the SSA before turning to the more somber topic of SyriaÕs
uprising.
What
is New at the SSA?
We all thank outgoing
president Fred Lawson for his great work. With the assistance of Secretary-Treasurer
Zayde Antrim, he boosted membership, sorted out tangled
accounts, and re-registered the organization properly. He recruited
conscientious officers and launched a thoroughgoing overhaul of the SSA
constitution. I have headed up the committee to rewrite the constitution, on
which Heghnar Watenpaugh and Geoffrey Schad also
served. The main thrust of these changes will be to make the recruitment and
nominating process for SSA officers more transparent and democratic.
Steve Tamari and Andrea
Stanton, the two most recent editors-in-chief of the SSA Newsletter, have
transformed the publication from a modest association effort to an important on-line
journal. It now regularly offers us an array of short academic articles and book
reviews that every Syrianist must read.
Beverly Tsacoyianis,
the new book review editor, has helped Andrea in putting out this issue. They
have prepared the groundwork for article-sharing with Bassam
HaddadÕs excellent new Ezine, Jadaliyya.com. This is
good news for everyone who writes for the SSA Newsletter; its reach and impact
on the field will increase dramatically.
Kudos to
Keith Watenpaugh. His
work:ÒThe League of Nations' Rescue of Armenian Genocide Survivors and the
Making of Modern Humanitarianism, 1920–1927,Ó won the SSA prize for best
article last year. The Prize Committee, now chaired by Steve Tamari, is gearing
up to choose the best dissertation on Syria written over the past two years.
Members at Large -- Heghnar Watenpaugh and Benjamin White -- leading Syrianists both, provide depth to our back
bench and promise a bright future for the Syrian Studies Association.
Benjamin Smuin is the new Student Representative in charge of
boosting the SSAÕs student membership and Hilary Kalmbach keeps the webpage up
to date and looking beautiful; although, the ÒStudy-in-SyriaÓ page, once the
most visited page, is being put on ice until the Syrian uprising sorts itself
out.
In short, the SSA is
becoming more representative, stocking up on great Syrianists,
publishing more, and recognizing the best scholarship.
Syria:
the End of the Post Colonial Era
In this time of growing
violence and political stalemate in Syria, it is useful to place the revolution
in its historical and regional context.
The Assads
stand atop the last minoritarian regime in the Levant
and thus seem destined to fall in this age of popular revolt. And when they do,
the post-colonial era will draw to a close. In many respects the Mashriq has been defined by minoritarian
regimes. Following WWII, minorities took control in every Levant state thanks the
colonial powers and their divide-and-rule tactics and to the fragmented
national community that bedeviled the region. The Maronites
in Lebanon, the Sunnis in Iraq, the Jews in Palestine, and the Alawis in Syria were able to capture the state due to the
leg-up they were given by either the French or the British.
The Jews of Palestine were
unique among the minorities. They were able to transform themselves into the
majority at the expense of the Palestinian Muslims and thus, solved their
problem – or at least seemed to have solved it despite the continuing
violence caused by Palestinians who continue to hope for land and
authority.
Neither the Christians of
Lebanon nor the Sunnis of Iraq were so lucky or ambitious. Nevertheless, both
clung to power at the price of dragging their countries into lengthy civil
wars. The Lebanese civil-war lasted 15 years; the Iraqi struggle between
Shiites and Sunnis, while almost ten years old, has yet to be entirely resolved.
The US military cast the Sunnis from the pinnacle of power down to the bottom
of society and raised the Shia up to assume control over Iraq. Over the last
several months, renewed violence has overtaken Baghdad as Prime Minister Maliki
tears apart the meager power-sharing arrangement left by the Americans and
consolidates his rule, and with it that of the ShiÕa generally. Revanchist
Sunnis are presumably behind the string of car-bombs that have rocked Baghdad.
The Alawis
of Syria captured power in 1966 due to their over-recruitment in the military by
the French Mandate authorities. Alawis by the
mid-1950s constituted some 65 percent of all noncommissioned officers in the
Syrian military.[1]
Within a decade, they took control of the military leadership and, with it,
Syria itself.[2]
With SyriaÕs last coup in 1970, Hafiz al-Asad
consolidated power in the hands of his family, where it has remained ever
since.
The Alawis
of Syria seem determined to repeat the violent plunge to the bottom characterized
the stubborn determination of minorities to cling to power elsewhere in the
Levant. It is hard to determine whether this stubbornness is due to the
rapaciousness of a corrupt elite, to the bleak prospects that the Alawi
community faces in a post-Asad Syria, or to the weak
faith that many in the region place in democracy and power-sharing formulas.
Whatever the reason, Syria's transition away from minority rule is likely to be
lengthy and violent. This seems to be the pattern in the region, where politics
is viewed by so many as a zero-sum game.
Hopefully the end of
SyriaÕs minoritarian regime will not be as protracted
or as bloody as it has been elsewhere in the region, but clearly the military
has a lot of fight left in it. AssadÕs Syria is likely to last longer than many
believed. This is true for three reasons: the regime has remained surprisingly
united and its army remains loyal and has significant advantages over the
opposition in its command and control and advanced weaponry; the opposition has
been bedeviled by factionalism and back-biting; and the US is unlikely to
intervene directly as it did in Iraq or Libya. Although the economy has been
spiraling downward and over fifty militias have emerged to fight Syrian authorities,
in all likelihood, they will need time before they can defeat or replace the
Syrian army.
When the Assad regime does
fall, however, it will be the end of a post-colonial era in the Levant during
which religious minorities held the lionÕs share of power.
Joshua Landis
May 2012
[1] Hanna Batatu,
"Some Observations on the Social Roots of Syria's Ruling, Military Group
and the Causes for its Dominance," The Middle East Journal 35
(Summer 1981): 341.
[2] Nikolaos Van
Dam, The Struggle for Power in Syria: Politics and Society under Asad and the Ba'th Party (I.
B. Tauris, 2011); Patrick Seale, Asad of Syria: the struggle for the Middle East, Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press. 1990.