Book review: Syria, A Recent History

By John McHugo

For the last seven years, Syria has been engulfed in a devastating civil war that has led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, while millions of refugees have lost their homes and livelihoods. The civil war has become the scene of vicious sectarian violence, as battles are fought between adherents to different ideologies and religions. At the same time global powers have intervened, the most significant of these being the United States, Russia and Iran. To many Westerners this conflict is hard to fully comprehend, as many different actors with their own agendas and allegiances wage war while the civilian population suffers.

In Syria, A Recent History, international lawyer and Middle East historian John McHugo examines the history of Syria from the partition of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War and on to the present day, in order to give readers a deeper understanding of the festering discontent that led to the eruption of civil war, as well as the brutality of the regime’s response.

The land we now know as Syria was originally known in Arabic as Bilaad al-Shaam, which roughly means “the land to the left”. This is because a man standing in the middle of Arabia, facing north, has Shaam to his left. Today’s borders are no natural creation, and the concept of Greater Syria encompasses territories that currently belongs to several neighboring countries. Under Ottoman rule an area of land greater than Syria’s current landmass fell under the administration of a province named Syria, but after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of the First World War, the victorious English and French sought to carve up former Ottoman territory to expand the size of their own colonial empires. During this process, lines were drawn on a map to divide the territory, often without consideration for the ethnic and religious borders and entirely new countries, such as Lebanon, came into being. I would have wished that McHugo had taken the time to explain how the borders in the region were drawn up at this time, in particular how this division reflected earlier agreements, such as the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916. As it is, the reader must consult other sources to gain a more comprehensive understanding of this process. 

In 1923, France was given a mandate by the League of Nations to govern the newly created countries of Syria (whose borders differed from those of the Ottoman province) and Lebanon. Since Britain was already deeply invested in Egypt, they acquired the neighboring territories of Palestine, Transjordan and Iraq. The mandate system differed from a traditional colony, in the sense that the indigenous population were supposed to be handed control of their respective territories in due time. In its founding covenant, the League of Nations describes a mandate as a “sacred trust of civilization” where the people in question are to be given tutelage so they can one day prosper and be granted independence.

This wasn’t something that a powerful and vocal colonial lobby in France was willing to accept, and French rule over their mandate was marred by instability and a clash of priorities between developing the new territories domestically and giving French trade and exports preferential treatment. Local elites also saw French administrators as interfering with their own interests. In 1925, Sultan al-Atrash, a leader of the Druze religious minority called his followers to revolt against French rule, and soon the entire French mandate was in jeopardy as the small garrison force was unable to fend off a tidal wave of revolts erupting all over Syria. France only managed to cling on to their mandate, notes McHugo, by shipping in large numbers of colonial troops, mainly from Morocco and Senegal, to finally end the rebellion in 1927. Thousands of Syrians had been killed or displaced and parts of the country were in ruin, adversely impacting commerce and agriculture.

McHugo uses the 1925 revolt as an example to illustrate the many divergent agendas and interests that have jostled for control of the hearts and minds of the Syrian people, and still do today. Devout Muslims were angered that Syria was ruled by Catholic France, but religion and dissatisfaction with French rule was only part of the explanation. The concept of an Arab identity and Arab nationalism were steadily gaining more and more adherents. The ideology known as Baathism was born in Syria, its founders being the gentle Damascene intellectual Michel Aflaq and a fellow Syrian he met while studying at the Sorbonne, Salah ad-Din al-Bitar, the Christian Orthodox son of a grain merchant. Baathism combined Arab nationalism and Pan-Arabism with a form of socialism that was milder than the Marxist-Leninism espoused by the Syrian Communist Party, which both men had had an earlier falling out with.

After the Second World War, Syria was granted independence in 1946. Syrians now had their own sovereign state and a fragile democracy, but many obstacles remained if the country were to achieve stability and prosperity. Government expenditure during the Mandate had mostly gone to security and the military, with the unfortunate side effect that education, infrastructure and all that a burgeoning country desperately needs had been neglected, notes McHugo sourly, and he makes a solid case for the Mandate period to have been one of lost opportunities for Syria’s economic development. With a growing population that was restless, poor and ill-educated, Syria was in a precarious position. Nevertheless, successive governments made some progress in developing the country.

After Egypt’s president Nasser had successfully stood his ground against France, the UK and Israel during the Suez crisis of 1956, his prestige and popularity in the Arab world was enormous, and support for Pan-Arabism was on the rise. Two years after Suez, these dreams became a reality when Syria and Egypt merged to form the United Arab Republic. This republic turned out to be short lived, as many Syrians became dissatisfied at playing second fiddle to the much more populous Egypt and in 1961 the union was dissolved when Syrian army officers launched a successful coup d’état.

Nine years later defense minister Hafez al-Assad, a member of the Alawi Shia minority who had risen from humble beginnings, launched another coup with the support of the military. The previous dictator, Salah Jadid, who had himself toppled a government led by the Syrian Baath party in 1966, was now replaced with Hafez al-Assad. Hafez’s rule began as he meant to go on, and his efforts to modernize Syria were marred by brutality, repression and the accumulation of great riches by a small clique of government officials.

The foreign policy of Hafez’s reign was not without its contradictions. Both Syria and neighboring Iraq were ruled by dictators who claimed to govern in the name of their country’s local branch of the Arab Socialist Baath Party, and both countries’ populations were majority Arab and Sunni, yet Hafez’s Syria was hostile to Iraq and instead allied with Iran after the revolution of 1979, an ethnic Persian state that mostly worshipped Shia Islam. During the Iran-Iraq war Syria supported Iran, while the US supported Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Syria’s relation with the US was seldom very good, one factor that contributed to this froideur was no doubt Syria’s long-standing enmity with the state of Israel. Syria fought against Israel during the Six-Day War of 1967 and the Yom-Kippur war of 1973. Following the Six-Day War, Israel occupied a large part of the Golan Heights, which Syria failed to retake when they went on the offensive in 1973. Israel maintains control of the occupied territory to this day, while the United Nations Security Council Resolution 497 states that this occupation is “null and void and without legal effect”. Another area of contention between Assad’s Syria and the West is Lebanon, where Hafez had no qualms about intervening if he felt it necessary. During the Lebanese civil war, which began in 1975, Syria intervened militarily to protect its interests in the region, as did Israel at a later date. According to McHugo, Syria’s involvement achieved some of Hafez’s goals, notably to keep Lebanon from falling into Israel’s orbit, but his indirect support of militant groups such as Hezbollah, which engaged in terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians, made peace with Israel an ever more distant prospect, and neither Hafez nor his son has succeeded in regaining the Golan heights through diplomacy. This continues to be a formal Syrian requirement for a peace deal with Israel. Hafez’s opportunity to mend relations with the West came after his nemesis Saddam Hussein’s occupation of Kuwait in 1990. As George H W Bush busied himself assembling an international coalition, Hafez offered Syria’s full support.

On the domestic front, McHugo explains the Janus-faced nature of Hafez’s rule. Living standards for ordinary Syrians has improved. Life expectancy has increased, and infant mortality decreased as education, electricity and proper sewage systems were introduced to virtually the entire population. At the same time, the country remained a repressive police state where dissidents were liable to get rounded up by the Mukhabarat, the notoriously brutal secret police. When his eldest son and heir apparent, Bassel, died in a car accident in 1994, Hafez first thought his stone-faced aides were carrying news that he had been deposed in a coup d’état, an indication of his paranoia and suspicion.

After Bassel’s death, his younger brother Bashar was recalled from his medical studies at King’s College in London, where he studied to become an ophthalmologist. He was hastily enrolled in the army as a stepping stone on the way to the presidency and succeeded his father when he died of cancer in 2000. In his inaugural speech, Assad seemed to strike a reformist note, conceding that some government officials might be corrupt. He proceeded to say that even though the time wasn’t yet ripe for Western-style democracy, Syria might achieve democracy sometime in the future by engaging in the somewhat vague concept of “democratic thinking” and by strengthening the country’s institutions. Bashar’s wife, Asma, whom he had met while studying in London, was a British citizen of Syrian nationality and Sunni faith. Hopes that the glamorous new presidential couple would fundamentally transform Syria were not realized. The country continued to be mired in corruption and stagnation, and large parts of the impoverished rural populace continued to flock to the cities in search of work.          

When the protests of the 2011 Arab Spring spread to Syria, the regime responded with a brutal crackdown by the military and secret police. What followed these initial protests we know all too well, Syria descended into vicious sectarian conflict, and the Assad regime survives because of Russian support.

In the concluding chapter, McHugo reflects on what could have been if Syria had been left alone from outside interference and had the opportunity to develop at their own pace, something he understandably laments was not to be. Perhaps most interestingly he criticizes the Western habit of wanting to redraw the map and divide the region into new countries to achieve stability. Carving up Syria into a number of smaller states, even if this takes into account local ethnic groups is doomed to failure due to the complex circumstances on the ground, claims McHugo.

All in all, I found Syria, A Recent History to be very interesting and thought provoking. McHugo succeeds in introducing the Western reader to the history behind the bloody civil war in Syria, as well as the fiendish complexity of Middle East politics.  

  

Book Review - Napoleon the Great

Book Review - Napoleon the Great

By Andrew Roberts

”He is the Napoleon of crime”, was how Sherlock Holmes described his nemesis Moriarty, head of the London underworld, in the popular crime novels of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This short description sufficed to inform the reader that Moriarty must be a truly formidable character indeed, someone who has risen to the absolute pinnacle of his chosen profession, and who is not to be trifled with. That the mere mention of Napoleon’s name roughly half a century after his death was still so pregnant with meaning and subtle menace to a Victorian audience suggests that during his short but intense life, Napoleon Bonaparte managed to leave his mark on the world. Even though he was ultimately defeated and brought low by his enemies, his name remains synonymous with military genius. In Napoleon the Great, British historian Andrew Roberts has written a superb biography of history’s consummate adventurer, a man who rose from relatively humble beginnings and exploited the tumultuous events of the French revolution to become Emperor of France and the undisputed master of Europe.

Napoleon Bonaparte (at this stage Buonaparte) was born in Ajaccio, Corsica in 1769. Since he was of the island’s nobility his future prospects were relatively bright, as long as his family could stay in the good graces of the French, who were reviled by many Corsican nationalists. Indeed, as a young man Napoleon sympathized with the nationalists, and viewed their leader, Pasquale Paoli, as something of a role model. His sympathies notwithstanding, the young Napoleon travelled to France to learn a soldier’s trade, and was soon commissioned as an artillery officer thanks to his gift for mathematics. Along the way his Corsican nationalist sympathies wavered, as he was forced to navigate the tumultuous political climate in the wake of the French revolution. Napoleon agreed with demands for equality before the law and the concept of promoting soldiers and civil servants based on merit, but he was never a hardcore Jacobin.

During the siege of Toulon in 1794, Napoleon commanded the victorious French forces, leading from the front, he was injured by the thrust of a British bayonet, but survived, and earned the respect of his men as a corporal in gold braid. Victory at the Siege of Toulon helped launch Napoleon’s career and catapulted him ahead of other ambitious peers. It also showed his capacity for hard work, ingenuity and disregard for his own physical safety on the battlefield, all of which would later help him seize power in France and humble the armies of his enemies.  

Even after this victory, Napoleon’s rise was by no means ensured, his career was nearly undone by his association with the bloodthirsty Robespierre brothers, when they were toppled later that same year, but after he returned to Paris and protected the Directory from a royalist uprising, his star was once more in the ascendant. Shortly after marrying the widow Joséphine de Beauharnais, Napoleon became a general at the age of twenty-seven. Fearful of the ideals of the French revolution, the old monarchies of Europe had forged a coalition against France, intending to restore the old order. The main theatre of war was in Germany, and the Italian theater was regarded as a sideshow. Napoleon thought otherwise. Arriving in Nice he took command of the Army of Italy, and proceeded to lead it to victory against superior Austrian forces. During this campaign, Roberts notes, Napoleon was able to use his great energy and speed of maneuver to best his opponents, who were often older than he was, and led armies that were more poorly organized.

After the Italian campaign Napoleon went to Egypt, to lead a military expedition with a contingent of scientists, with the aim of challenging Britain’s overseas empire. The Egyptian campaign was a failure from a military standpoint, but thanks to Napoleon’s soldiers bringing home the Rosetta stone, modern Egyptologists are able to read hieroglyphics.

With the political situation in turmoil and France beset by external enemies as well as internal troubles, Napoleon seized power along with a group of political allies and became first consul in 1799, his position further cemented by the results of an election that was rigged in his favor.

Even though peace was soon signed with France’s principal enemies, Austria, Great Britain and Russia (Prussia joined them later), these nations would over the coming years form new coalitions against France, and would in time ground Napoleon and his empire down.

A vigorous domestic reformer as well as a soldier, Napoleon’s reign saw France being modernized in a many fundamental ways. His legal system, the Codé Napoleon, remains in use in France and in many countries around the word today. Napoleon reorganized the French civil administration to be one based on merit. He also founded the Banque de France, as well as reforming the French education system and implementing a new tax code. Always a tireless micro-manager who was interested in controlling the minutest aspect of his realms, he wrote a staggering number of letters and dictates throughout his life. Once, when he had left France to embark on one of his many military campaigns, he wrote a letter back home demanding that a provincial priest who had given a bad sermon would be severely admonished. This restless energy and capacity for overwork was one of Napoleon’s greatest strengths, even though he was unable to remain fully as vigorous later in life as his health deteriorated.      

Over the coming sixteen years after becoming consul in 1799, Napoleon waged war almost continually against France’s enemies. Having soundly defeated the Austrians, Prussians and Russians in battle many times, he reached the zenith of his power in 1807, when he met Tsar Alexander of Russia on a barge floating in the Neman river to sign the treaty of Tilsit, in effect dividing Europe between these two absolute monarchs. Relations between the two men were initially cordial, but Napoleon, who effused about Alexander that “Were he a woman, I would have taken him as my mistress”, never got the measure about the cool-headed and cunning tsar.

One of Napoleon’s most severe weakness, besides his total ineptitude when it came to naval warfare, was his inability to modernize French trade and finance. In The Ascent of Money, previously reviewed on this blog, Niall Ferguson asserts that British trade and finance remained superior to France throughout this era, which, together with the power of the Royal Navy, enabled the island nation to stay in the fight and bankroll France’s enemies. In effect, Napoleon’s empire was funded by victories on the battlefield that brought riches through plunder, a modus operandi that was inefficient and unsustainable in the long run. The bonds of the Banque de France were never equal to those issued by the British, and naval dominance meant that overseas trade could deliver prosperity much more reliably than plundering Vienna for a third time.     

An effect of the trade imbalance was that Napoleon tried to browbeat his defeated enemies into agreeing to an embargo of British goods, called the continental system. This hurt the economies of the German states, as well as Russia. Napoleon’s anger over Tsar Alexander’s transgression against the continental system were one of the factors that led to the greatest military blunder of his career. In 1812 Napoleon invaded Russia with an army more than 600 000 strong. Even though he captured Moscow, the Russians retreated from his armies and burned everything that could be of use by the French, and the brutal winter soon started to take its toll. In November 1812, the shattered remnants of Napoleon’s armies crossed the Berezina river and retreated into Poland. This fatal defeat, which robbed the Grande Armée of most of its veterans as well as most of its cavalry, led Napoleon’s rivals to declare war against France once again. Even though Napoleon fought bravely and with great ability to defend his empire, his efforts were in vain. Roberts points out that critics who dismissed Napoleon as a spend force by this point are wrong, he remained a battlefield commander of great ability, but ultimately France’s enemies were too numerous, its armies too depleted and its population too tired of war.

After a short Exile to the Mediterranean Island of Elba, Napoleon briefly returned to power in 1815, but was defeated by a combined force of British and Prussian soldiers at the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815. Napoleon’s defeat was not inevitable, but a series of bad decisions led to him being defeated by Blücher and the Duke of Wellington, who had previously shown great ability while fighting against the French armies in the Peninsular war. Exiled for a second time, this time to the remote pacific Island of Saint Helena, Napoleon died in 1821, most likely of stomach cancer, the illness that had claimed the life his father and several other family members.  

The Napoleonic epic gives any biographer a treasure trove of material, and Roberts has used all of this to great effect. Napoleon the Great is a thoroughly enjoyable read that is sure to delight anyone with even a remote interested in history, and tells the tale of one of the most fascinating men who ever lived. It is true that the ears waged by Napoleon led to the deaths of many, both soldiers of civilians. It is also true, Roberts is careful to mention, that not all wars fought by Napoleon were his fault. Yes, his invasions of Spain and Russia were naked acts of imperialist aggression, but he also tried to make peace with Great Britain and her allies repeatedly, but was most often rebuffed and had to go to war only once diplomacy had failed.

In answering the question of whether Napoleon managed to achieve his dreams and ambitions, Roberts points to his childhood heroes, Alexander the great and Julius Caesar. Before Napoleon any ambitious young man wanted to be like Alexander the great and Julius Caesar. After Napoleon, any ambitious young man wanted to be like Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Napoleon Bonaparte.