Three weeks of demonstrations during the Spring of 2011, ended 23 years of President Zine al-Abidine bin Ali’s dictatorship in Tunisia and 30 years of President Hosni Mubarak’s dictatorship in Egypt. In Syria, by contrast, it was a fourteen-year-orgy of barrel bombs and chemical weapons before Bashar al-Asad fled to Moscow. Why was Syria so bloody?
In what follows, I will outline the shared characteristics that led to the uprisings in the three countries. I will describe how the protests unfolded. I will discuss why the bin Ali and Mubarak regimes collapsed so swiftly, while Asad battled his people for fourteen long years with unprecedented savagery.
Shared Characteristics
In Tunis, Cairo, and Damascus, a politicized military was the supreme power. The three presidents were absolute rulers, non-representative; non-participatory; and non-transparent. As if to legitimate their dictatorships, they conducted uncontested farcical referendums, which they won every time with near 100% approval of the votes cast. Lawless brutal security forces turned the life of citizens in the three countries into a living hell.
Having no political legitimacy, a huge cult of personality replaced separation of governmental powers, political parties, free press, and egalitarian nongovernmental organizations. Parliaments were rubber stamp entities. The justice system and the courts protected the regimes’ henchmen. Fear of torture in police dungeons terrified the most hardened of parliamentarians and the most fearless of judges. Emergency laws smothered peoples’ liberty.
Misguided and ignorant, the three dictators pursued economically and environmentally unsustainable policies. Corruption was the glue that cobbled together narrow coalitions of the ruling groups. Obscene illicit commissions on government contracts and import/export permits created unconscionable opulence and vulgar disparities in wealth and income between the ruling groups and the rest of the population. They created an ugly economic apartheid in the three societies.
Uprising in Tunisia
On December 17, 2010, Muhammad Bouazizi, a 26-year-old vegetable street vendor from the town of Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia, set himself on fire to protest the confiscation of his cart and the humiliation he suffered at the hands of municipal officials and police.[1] Bouazizi sparked widespread demonstrations in Tunisia against President Zine al-Abidine bin Ali. On January 14, 2012, bin Ali fled to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia after 23 years of rule.
The Tunisian army, drawn from a homogeneous non-sectarian Sunni society, refused to shoot at protesters, effectively transforming Tunisia’s popular uprising into a coup d’état. In an interview with Le Parisien newspaper, quoted by Reuters, Admiral Jacques Lanxade, a former French chief of staff and later ambassador to Tunisia said, “The chief of staff of the land army, General Rachid Ammar, resigned, refusing to get the army to open fire, and it is probably he who advised Ben Ali to go, telling him ‘You’re finished,’”[2] The Tunisian uprising was swift, effective, and inspirational to the Arab masses everywhere.
Uprising in Egypt
On January 18, 2011, four days after the Tunisian President fled, one man died, and another was injured after they set themselves on fire in Cairo.[3] A week later, on January 25, 2011, thousands of anti-government protesters clashed with riot police in Tahrir Square in the center of Cairo, demanding the end of President Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule. The protests quickly spread to othercities. During the first week, 300 people may have been killed across the country, according to UN human rights chief.[4]
On January 31, 2011, the Egyptian army, like the Tunisian army, drawn from a homogeneous non-sectarian Sunni society, declared its respect for the legitimate rights of the people. stating that it would not use force against protesters.[5] A week later, February 5, 2011, Mubarak announced a series of concessions; he replaced the cabinet, appointed a vice-president for the first time, and declared that he would not run for re-election for a sixth term in September 2011. He also replaced the politburo of the ruling party, including his son Gamal, and pledged dialogue with opposition parties.[6]
Egypt’s new vice-president, Omar Sulaiman, invited protest groups and opposition parties to immediate negotiations on constitutional reform. Six groups, including the banned Muslim Brothers organization, met with the vice president on February 6, 2011.[7] The participants agreed to form a joint committee of judicial and political figures tasked with proposing constitutional amendments.[8] On February 11, 2011, Hosni Mubarak resigned, handing over Egypt’s affairs to the high command of the armed forces, headed by the defense minister.[9]
Uprising in Syria
Shortly after Bin Ali fled and before Mubarak resigned, Asad told the Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2011, that Syria was insulated from popular uprisings because he understood the needs of the Syrian people and that his policies fulfilled their aspirations. He also added that he was very closely linked to the beliefs of his people.[10]
Two weeks later, on February 15, 2011, school children in the southern city of Dar’a, wrote anti-Assad slogans on the school wall.[11] Some 15 children were arrested and tortured. Dar’a was outraged. Heartened by the swift events in Tunisia and Egypt, a peaceful demonstration on March 18, 2011, following the Friday prayer erupted. The regime’s security forces killed at least three demonstrators. By March 26, 2011, after sixty years of sectarianism, emergency laws, injustice, and cruelty, the fear barrier was broken. More peaceful demonstrations spread to other cities demanding the removal of the Asad family from power.
In parliament, on March 30, 2011, Asad was defiant. He repeated the well-known cliché that the protests were a disguise for a foreign conspiracy to “fragment Syria… an Israeli agenda.” He insisted that Syria’s protesters had been “duped.” While acknowledging popular demands for reform, he declared that it would be either him or the gun.[12]
On April 25, 2011, army tanks rolled into Dar’a. Braving bullets, arrests, and death in police torture dungeons, demonstrations grew in dozens of cities, towns, and villages. They became features of the noon prayer on Fridays and during the burial rituals. Tanks rolled into Banyas, Dar’a, Hama, Jableh, Jisr al-Shughour, and Homs, among other Sunni cities and towns.
Asad’s March 30th speech was echoed by his notorious cousin, Rami Makhlouf, a wheeler dealer under US sanctions since 2008 for “manipulating the judicial system and using Syrian intelligence to intimidate rivals.”[13] In an interview with the New York Times reported on May 10, 2011, Makhlouf warned that “Syria’s ruling elite, a tight-knit circle at the nexus of absolute power… will fight to the end … The ruling elite … had grown even closer during the crisis,” he continued, and “the decision of the government now is that they [have] decided to fight.”[14]
As Asad’s military forces lost ground between 2011 and early 2013, he opened the door to Iranian forces. They helped train and equip a Syrian paramilitary force, National Defense Forces, composed of around 100,000 men. It supplemented Syria’s standing army of around 300,000 soldiers. Additionally, Iran sent thousands of Shi’ite mercenaries, from Lebanon’s Hezbollah to a Pakistani Shi’ite Brigade, Zaynabiyyoun (named after Zaynab, daughter of the fourth caliph Ali bin Abi Talib with his wife Fatima, daughter of the Prophet Muhammad), and an Afghani Shi’ite Brigade, Fatimiyyoun (named after Fatima, daughter of the Prophet Muhammad).
As Asad’s forces and Iran’s mercenaries were close to defeat, he sought and received air force support from Moscow on September 30, 2015. The Russians bombed anti Asad cities to smithereens. Two years into the campaign, Russia’s Deputy Defense Minister disclosed that Russia had tested over 600 new weapons and military equipment on Syria: “Practically all new items have passed through the Syrian theater of war in order for us to have an opportunity to see what their real characteristics are and how these weapons are behaving.”[15]
Four years after the revolution had started, the wholesale destruction of infrastructure, residential buildings, schools, hospitals, and mosques was visible from satellite imagery at night—the country was 83% darker, with Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, 97% darker.[16]
Almost fourteen years later, on December 8, 2024, when Asad finally fled to Moscow, the death toll had reached an estimated 618,000, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.[17] A rough extrapolation of the number of the injured and the maimed, could raise the total number of casualties to three million. Furthermore, thirteen million were displaced within Syria and in neighboring countries and Europe, a calamitous loss for a society of 23 million.
Why the Arab Spring in Syria was a Bloodbath, and not in Tunisia and Egypt
The opposition to bin Ali and Mubarak were over domestic economic and political issues. In Syria, the revolution was additionally a challenge to Asad’s sectarianism and a threat to the geopolitical balance of power of the Middle East.
1. Asad’s Sectarianism
The religious and ethnic compositions of the populations in Tunisia Egypt, and Algeria, on one hand, and Syria, on the other are very different. While the populations of Tunisia and Egypt are homogeneous, Syria’s population is not.
Tunisia’s population of 12 million is 98% Arab, 99% Sunni. Egypt’s population of 110 million is 99% Egyptian Arab, 90% Sunni.
Syria’s population of 23 million is a tapestry of religions, sects, and ethnicities, with the Alawite sect representing 10% of the population and the Sunnis 80%. The rest are Christians, Druzes, and Isma’ilis. Arabs make up around 85% of the population, with Armenians, Circassian, and Kurds representing the rest. Arabic is the official language. Aramaic, Armenian, Circassian, and Kurdish are spoken, in addition to English and French.
Sunnis do not regard the Alawite Sect as Islamic, a very serious problem for Syria. By virtue of their 80% majority, Sunnis feel that it is their democratic right in a freely elected parliament to be represented by most of the seats. This is not to say, however, that the government must be headed by a Sunni. Faris El-Khouri, a Christian, was Syria’s Prime Minister twice, from October 14, 1944, to October 1, 1945, and from October 1954 to February 13, 1955. Since that time, however, democracy died in Syria, save for the short period of time between the break-up of the union between Syria and Egypt on September 28, 1961, and the March 8, 1963, military putsch that brought a 33-year-old un-commissioned captain, Hafiz al-Asad, and five other lowly officers to power.
The orthodox theologian ibn Taymiyya (1263-1328), the inspiration behind the Wahhabi ideology of Saudi Arabia, condemned the Nusayris as being more dangerous than the Christians. Ibn Taymiyya encouraged Muslims to conduct jihad against them.[18]
In July 2005, an international Islamic conference in Amman convened by King Abdullah II, attended by 200 leading Islamic scholars from 50 countries unanimously recognized that:
Whosoever is an adherent to one of the four Sunni schools of Islamic jurisprudence (Hanafi, Maliki, Shaf‘i and Hanbali), the two Shi’ite schools of Islamic jurisprudence (Ja‘fari and Zaydi), the Ibadi school of Islamic jurisprudence and the Thahiri school of Islamic jurisprudence, is a Muslim.[19]
Sensitive to his religious illegitimacy as president, Hafiz removed from the constitution in 1973, the clause in the previous constitution that required the president of the republic to be a Muslim. In reaction, demonstrations rocked Syria. To avert bloody confrontations, Hafiz retreated. He instructed his rubber-stamp parliament to reinstate the old clause.
To confirm that an Alawite can legitimately be called a Muslim, Hafiz obtained in 1973 from Imam Musa al-Sadr, head of the Higher Shi’ite Council in Lebanon, a religious opinion (fatwa) that made the Alawites a community of Shi’ite Islam. The opinion was politically expedient for al-Sadr during the turbulent period in Lebanon that led to the civil war (April 1975 – October 1990). The fatwa failed to change Sunnis’ attitude towards Alawism.
Having no religious or electoral legitimacy, the Asads’ ruling minority of father and son suffered from siege mentality. A sectarian coalition of mutual dependency between Hafiz and Alawite generals was a natural. Only trusted Alawite officers and soldiers filled the ranks of the armed and security forces, especially near Damascus. Asad appointed Sunnis as prime ministers, but not as generals in the tank battalions, or in the intelligence brigades.
On February 11, 1979, Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini became the ruler of Iran. Hafiz quickly struck a strategic alliance with the new regime. Syria became the only Arab country to openly support a Persian Shi’ite Iran against the Arab Republic of Iraq under the Sunni Saddam Hussein during the eight-year Iran/Iraq War (1980 – 1988).
Syria, a Land of Fear
Multiple sectarian security services, numbering 120,000 soldiers, reported directly to Hafiz and son.[20] They overlapped without coordination, broke the law with impunity, and watched each other. Parents were fearful of their own small children who might inadvertently divulge in school anti conversations heard at home. Friends would not trust friends for fear that a cynical ear might be listening. Stories of extreme torture put the fear of God in would be dissenters. Even female relatives were tortured on camera to break a husband, a father, a mother, or a brother. Such practices in Syria’s conservative society were terrifying. Sixty years of Asads’ nasty police state ruined Syria’s societal fabric. Amnesty International documented 38 types of torture used against detainees.[21]
Extreme sectarianism polarized Syria’s society like never before. it made the Sunnis “more Sunni, Alawites more Alawite, Christians more Christians, Kurds more Kurdish.” [22] It was Asads’ formula: “we protect you because you are afraid, but we need you afraid so that you ask us to protect you.” [23]
Long before the revolution of March 18, 2011, industrial scale massacres against Sunnis had poisoned the atmosphere between the ruling Asad minority and the majority Sunnis. Palmyra and Hama are notable.
Massacre in the Palmyra Prison
On June 26, 1980, Hafiz Asad escaped an assassination attempt in Damascus. The next day, two units of Hafiz’s brother Rif’at’s Defense Companies committed a massacre in the Palmyra Prison. They massacred 500 helpless inmates with machine gun fire and hand grenades. Patrick Seale described the horror: “In Palmyra, deep in the desert, where Muslim Brothers were being held … about sixty men were driven to the desert prison, split up into six or seven squads and let loose on the prison dormitories with orders to kill anyone inside. Some five hundred inmates died in cells echoing to the fearful din of automatic weapons, exploding grenades, and dying shrieks of ‘God is great.’”[24]
Massacre in the City of Hama
The brutality with which the regime dealt with an uprising by the Muslim Brotherhood in the city of Hama in western Syria in February 1982 was beastly. A three-week orgy of bombardment from the air and the ground demolished this city of around 200,000 residents. Patrick Seale wrote of the Hama carnage: “The battle for Hama raged for three grim weeks … Hama was besieged by some 12,000 men … Many civilians were slaughtered in the prolonged mopping up, whole districts razed … Scores of mosques, churches and other ancient monuments were damaged and looted … Just how many lives were lost in Hama must remain a matter of conjecture, with government sympathizers estimating a mere 3,000 and critics as many as 20,000 and more.”[25] Rif’at boasted that the death toll was 36,000.[26]
2. Threatening the Geopolitical Balance of Power in the Middle East
The failure of the G. W. Bush occupation of Iraq (2003-2011), empowered Iran. It enabled Tehran to dominate Baghdad and Southern Iraq, with its Holy Cities of Najaf and Karbala. The failure allowed Iran to build a land corridor to supply weapons and men via Iraq and Syria to Lebanon’s Hezbollah. Known as the Shi’ite Crescent, Asad was the lynchpin in this configuration. Without Syria, no weapon may flow to Hezbollah.
The Shi’ite Crescent exacerbated existing tensions between the Gulf Cooperation Council states (GCC) and Iran. Iran occupied in 1971 three islands belonging to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) strategically located at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz—Abu Musa, Greater Tunb, and Lesser Tunb. The UAE continues to demand the return of the islands to no avail. In Bahrain, while most of the population are Shi’ites, the ruling al-Khalifa family is Sunni. For decades, Iran has claimed Bahrain. Further, during the First Gulf War (1979 – 1989), GCC states helped Iraq against Iran and supported Syria’s anti Asad groups.
In 2014, the so called, Islamic State emerged. It wreaked untold criminality in Northern Iraq and Eastern Syria. In 2016, the US military came to the aid of Kurdish forces against the Islamic State. Syria, thus, became a theatre of war for Iran, Russia, and the US.
Turkey, by virtue of its 900-kilometer border with Northern Syria entered the melee on the side of anti-Asad groups. It became host for more than three million Syrians who escaped Asad’s barrel bombs. Also, Turkey protected around four million internally displaced Syrians in the Idlib Provence bordering Turkey in Northwest Syria. Turkey had under its protection and control more Syrians than Asad did.
Footnotes
[1] Frida Dahmani, “Tunisia: The last hours of Mohamed Bouazizi”, The Africa Report, December 17, 2020), https://www.theafricareport.com/55743/tunisia-the-last-hours-of-mohamed-bouazizi
[2] William Maclean, “Tunisia Army Pivotal to Ben Ali Ousting: Reports,” Reuters, (January 17, 2011), http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE70G52B20110117
[3] “Two torch themselves in Egypt, taking cases to 10”. Alarabiya.net, (January 18, 2011), https://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2011%2F01%2F18%2F133991
[4] John Simpson, “Egypt Unrest: Protesters Hold Huge Cairo Demonstration,” BBC, (February 1, 2011), http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12331520
[5] Egypt protests: Army rules out the use of force, BBC, (January 31, 2011), https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12330169
[6] Frank Wisner, “Egypt Unrest: US Disowns Envoy Comment on Hosni Mubarak,” BBC, (February 5, 2011), http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12374753
[7] Lyse Doucet, “Egypt Protests: Army Rules Out the Use of Force,” BBC, (January 31, 2011), https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12330169
[8] “Egyptian VP Vows Changes to Appease Protesters”, Globoport, (February 7, 2011), https://www.globoport.hu/96309/egyptian-vp-vows-changes-to-appease-protesters/
[9] Yolande Knell, “Egypt Crisis: President Hosni Mubarak Resigns as Leader,” BBC, (February 12, 2011), http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12433045
[10] “Interview with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad,” The Wall Street Journal, (January 31, 2011), http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703833204576114712441122894.html
[11] “Syria’s ‘graffiti boy’ recalls start of deadly conflict”, Anadolu Agency, March 14, 2018), https://www.aa.com.tr/en/life/syrias-graffiti-boy-recalls-start-of-deadly-conflict/1088949
[12] Liam Stack, “Syria Offers Changes Before Renewed Protests,” The New York Times, (March 31, 2011), http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/01/world/middleeast/01syria.html?_r=1&ref=global-home
[13] “Bashar al-Assad’s inner circle,” BBC, (July 30, 2012), http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-13216195
[14] Antoine Shadid, “Syria Elite to Fight Protests Till ‘the End’,” The New York Times, (May 10, 2011), http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/world/middleeast/11makhlouf.html?_r=1&ref=global-home
[15] Damien Sharkov, “Russia Is Using Syria to Test Its Next Generation of Weapons,” Newsweek, (August 24, 2017), http://www.newsweek.com/russia-using-syria-test-next-generation-its-weapons-654689
[16] Michelle Kelemen, “Drawn-Out Syrian Civil War Spawns A Literal Dark Age”, NPR, (March 12, 2015), https://www.npr.org/2015/03/12/392432928/drawn-out-syrian-civil-war-spawns-a-literal-dark-age
[17] Aryn Baker, “How Many People Have Died in Syria’s Civil War?” The New York Times, (December 11, 2024), https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/11/world/middleeast/syria-civil-war-death-toll.html
[18] Patrick Seale, Assad, the Struggle for the Middle East, (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1995), P. 10.
[19] The Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought, “The Amman Message,” P. 16, https://rissc.jo/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Amman_Message-EN.pdf
[20] “Syrian security branches and Persons in charge”, Syrian Network of Human Rights, https://snhr.org/public_html/wp-content/pdf/english/Syrian_security_branches_and_Persons_in_charge_en.pdf
[21] GlobalSecurity.org, “Syria Intelligence & Security Agencies”, https://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/world/syria/intro.htm
[22] Yassin al-Haj Saleh, “The Dark Path of Minority Politics. Why Privileging Minorities Will Only Perpetuate the Syrian Catastrophe,” The Century Foundation, (April 18, 2019). https://tcf.org/content/report/dark-path-minority-politics/?agreed=1&fbclid=IwAR37szEePs-ZSncc-3e99r4S9BiIyJU7Xvh9_x58cDpyZJSPaTS7ykxanCs&agreed=1&agreed=1
[23] Ibid.
[24] Patrick Seale, Assad, the Struggle for the Middle East (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1995), P. 329.
[25] Ibid. P. PP. 333-334.
[26] Adrian Bloomfield, “Maher Assad: Profile of the Syrian President’s Feared Brother,” The Telegraph, (June 9, 2011), http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/8565025/Maher-Assad-profile-of-the-Syrian-presidents-feared-brother.html