THE MANY AND THE HAPPY FEW
William Dalrymple
New Statesman, UK
May 31 2006
Syria – Politically repressive, the minority Alawite rulers have
encouraged a surprising religious tolerance. By William Dalrymple
Across the length of what was once the Ottoman empire, in the 20th
century a savage polar isation replaced pluralism. In dribs and drabs,
and sometimes in great tragic exoduses, religious minorities have
fled to places where they can be majorities; and, when they are too
few in number to do that, have fled the region altogether, seeking
out places less heavy in history such as America and Australia. While
Europe became more multicultural in the 20th century, over the same
period country after country in the Middle East changed, in the
opposite direction, into a series of monolithic, mono-ethnic blocks.
That Syria offers a hopeful exception to this rule may seem
surprising. Strategically vital, it has been virtually ignored by
both the US and the UK since the end of the Iraq war – except when it
has been at the receiving end of a stream of bellicose threats. The
Syrian leadership is never consulted on matters concerning Iraq and
Israel, and the Bush administration’s only policy towards the country
seems to be to put it on notice that if it does not be-have itself it
could well be America’s next target. Donald Rumsfeld, among others,
has taken frequent pot-shots at Damascus, accusing it of aiding
the Iraqi resistance, sponsoring terrorism, assassinating Leb anese
leaders and sheltering refugees from Saddam Hussein’s regime. There
is no question of constructive engagement with Syria. Instead, it
is seen merely as unofficial adjunct to the “axis of evil”, ripe for
reform if not outright invasion.
Yet the Middle East is not a place where simplistic notions of good
guys and bad guys make much sense. Torture, repression of minorities,
the imposition of military law and the abuse of basic human rights
happen every bit as frequently and as unpleasantly within states ruled
by western allies, such as Egypt, Israel (and the occupied territories)
and Saudi Arabia, as they do in states such as Syria and Iran.
Few would deny that Syria has much to reform. It is a one-party
Ba’athist state where political activists are suppressed and an
extensive network of secret police fills the jails with political
prisoners, many of whom will never come before a judge. Violent
opposition to the regime is met with overwhelming force, most
dramatically in the case of the armed rising of the Muslim Brotherhood
in Hama in 1982: the city was sealed off and at least 10,000 people
were killed.
Yet the balance sheet is far from one-sided. With the Pentagon already
draw-ing up invasion plans, while Iraq slides ever closer to civil war
and anarchy, and with the Taliban resurgent in southern Afghanistan,
it is well to consider carefully what would be lost if President
Bashar al-Assad’s regime were to be deposed.
Syria may be a one-party police state, but it is a police state
that tends to leave its citizens alone as long as they keep out of
politics. And while political freedoms have always been severely and
often brutally restricted, both the current and the previous president,
Hafez al-Assad, have allowed the Syrian people widespread cultural and
religious freedoms. Today, these give Syria’s minorities a security
and stability far greater than those of their counterparts elsewhere
in the region.
This is particularly true of Syria’s ancient Christian communities.
On my last visit, the Syrian Orthodox Metropolitan of Aleppo, Mor
Gregorios Yohanna Ibra him, told me: “Christians are better off in
Syria than anywhere else in the Middle East. Other than Lebanon,
this is the only country in the region where a Christian can really
feel the equal of a Muslim – and Lebanon, of course, has many other
problems. If Syria were not here, we would be finished. It is a
place of sanctuary: for the Nestorians driven out of Iraq, the Syrian
Orthodox and the Armenians driven out of Turkey, even the Palestinian
Christians driven out by the Israelis.”
The confidence of the Christians in Syria is something you can’t help
noticing, particularly if you have arrived from eastern Turkey.
There, until recently, minority languages such as the Syrian
Christians’ Aramaic were banned from the airwaves and the classroom.
Christianity in eastern Tur key is a secretive affair and the
government has closed all the country’s seminaries. But cross into
Syria and you find a very different picture. Qamishli, the first
town on the Syrian side of the frontier, is 75 per cent Christian,
and icons of Christ and images of his mother fill almost every shop
and decorate every other car window – an extraordinary display after
the furtive paranoia of Christianity in Turkey.
The reason for this is not hard to find. The Assads are Alawite, a Shia
Muslim minority regarded by orthodox Sunni Muslims as heretical and
disparagingly referred to as Nusayri, or “little Christians”: indeed,
their liturgy seems to be partly Christian in origin. Bashar kept
himself in power by forming what was in effect a coalition of Syria’s
religious min orities through which he was able to coun terbalance
the weight of the Sunni majority. In the Assads’ Syria, Christians
have always done particularly well: in his final years as president,
five of Hafez al-Assad’s seven closest advisers were Christians.
This does not excuse the repressive policies of Assad’s regime. But
in a region where repression is the rule rather than the exception,
one must remember that political rights and wrongs are more complex
than neo-cons and Pentagon hawks are prepared to acknowledge – or
even realise.
William Dalrymple is the New Statesman’s south Asia correspondent.