The failure of the Syrian revolution

Initially, the uprising revolved around peaceful and pro-democracy demonstrations against the fearsome Assad dictatorship, which has ruled Syria since the 1970s. But the regime quickly turned its weapons on protesters, and some took up arms in response.

The rebel groups that showed the greatest achievements on the battlefield were the jihadists, including branches of Al Qaeda and, later, of the Islamic State. Many experts say that this was Assad’s plan all along. His regime’s relentless scorched earth strategy – razing entire cities, poisoning neighborhoods with nervous gas and maiming civilians with barrel bombs – brought much of the initially peaceful opposition into the arms of violent fundamentalists, who discredited the revolution and gave Assad a justification. for its brutal repression.

Since 2011, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, almost 600,000 Syrians have died (largely at the hands of Assad’s forces and allies), and the UN says 5.6 million have fled abroad – almost a quarter of the population. pre-war population of Syria. The country today is consumed by poverty, disease and economic ruin. A decade later, Syria bears little resemblance to the country in which I was fortunate to live during the years before the war.

Like many observers and historians in Syria, I wondered if any of the tragedies were predictable. Aspects of that were. The horrors in Syria since 2011 are reminiscent of the fierce intercommunity violence that engulfed Iraq and Lebanon (Syria’s neighbors to the east and west) from the 1970s to the early 2000s. All three were Arab states invented by imperial powers in the wake world wars, in which ethnic and religious minorities jealously clung to power and used sectarianism as a weapon to divide and govern their mixed populations. Oppression, violence and war followed.

Still, looking at 2011, what surprised me most in the course of the conflict was the total failure of the Syrian revolution to achieve its original objective of overthrowing and replacing the Assad regime. At the beginning of the war, I was convinced that Mr. Assad would eventually leave. The same has happened with many in the West, including the Obama administration. Today this seems naive, but in 2011, the world had just witnessed the rapid ouster of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali from Tunisia after 24 years in power and the even more impressive fall of Hosni Mubarak from Egypt after three decades of autocratic rule.

At times during the past decade, the Syrian regime faced risks to its survival – for example, when rebel militias besieged Damascus in 2012-13, or when President Barack Obama almost bombed government targets after the notorious 2013 chemical attack by the Assad regime to civilians in the suburbs of Damascus. But those moments have passed and, with them, the regime’s decision to survive has only been strengthened. The same happened with the will of the most powerful international supporters from Syria, Iran and Russia, who came to Assad’s aid with soldiers, jet fighters and material. Thanks to them, he now controls about 70% of the country’s territory.

One way to better understand the failure of the Syrian revolution is to contrast it with examples of successful revolutions in recent Middle Eastern history. What conditions in these countries made radical and lasting political changes possible – and did not exist in Syria?

An example is the Tunisian revolution of 2010-11, the only success story of the Arab Spring. Tunisia is a much smaller country than Syria (with a population of 11 million in 2011, compared to Syria’s 21 million). It is also more homogeneous, predominantly Arab and Sunni, while Syria is a volatile mix of Arabs, Kurds, Sunnis, Alawites, Christians and others. The Tunisian revolution took place within a country that had not been governed along ethnic or religious lines, in which it was easier to bring a wide segment of society together for the revolutionary cause. Syria, on the other hand, has been administered as a largely Alawite dictatorship for decades, with the Assad family in charge. Given Syria’s entrenched communal divisions, it was much more difficult to forge a revolutionary message that could attract many different groups.

Another example is the Iranian revolution of 1978-79, which led to the overthrow of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and the birth of the Islamic Republic. One reason for the success of the revolution was that the shah alienated virtually every major constituent of Iranian society, from intellectuals and merchants to clergy, students and the urban poor. These groups came together around Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, thus expanding their base beyond the pious masses.

Unlike the shah, Assad maintained friends just enough to help him hold on to power, especially when aided by ample weaponry and money. Major factions remained committed to the regime, including the Assad Alawite sect (about 15% of Syria’s population) and other religious minorities (including Christians, Druze and others, making up about 10%). A significant number of Syrian Sunnis have also sided with Assad, especially in large cities, grudgingly supporting him as an alternative to the opposition jihadists. Crucially, the Syrian army remained loyal to Assad (although it is now increasingly dependent not only on Alawite officers, but on Alawite frontline troops), something that has not happened to national armies in Iran or Tunisia.

A final example is Algeria, whose revolution took the form of an agonizing war of independence from France in 1954-62. As Columbia University historian Matthew Connelly argued, Algerian revolutionaries won mainly because of their diplomatic skills, which enabled them to fight “for world opinion and international law rather than for conventional military objectives”. Algerian rebels managed to persuade key countries, including the United States and others across the Middle East, Europe and the Soviet bloc, to recognize them – and not France – as legitimate representatives of Algeria before the end of the war.

Syrian revolutionaries have never been more diplomatically successful. They persuaded the United States and other important countries to declare that Assad had to go, but these powers have never done much to really try to overthrow him. In contrast, the Assad regime benefited from Iran and Russia’s unwavering support in the military and diplomatic arenas, which proved to be the key factor in Assad’s survival.

A decade later, what should – or can – be done about Syria? The province of Idlib and the Kurdish territories in the north remain beyond the regime’s reach. But the bitter truth is that, for all intents and purposes, Mr. Assad won the war, and the Syrian revolution failed. He won by devastating his country and massacring his own people, but he won anyway. At this point, the only thing that can be expected – and that the United States and its partners work urgently – is a political agreement that stabilizes the country and offers some perspective to contain the worst excesses of the Assad regime and its relentless facilitators.

—Dr. Sahner is an associate professor of Islamic history at Oxford University and author of “Between the ruins: Syria’s past and present” (Oxford University Press).