The reason why we have a successful sort of situation in Tunisia, a less violent situation in Tunisia and then somewhat violent but not quite so situation in Egypt and why the situation was contained so quickly is because these countries had a different dynamism internally and different relationships with the international community. In Tunisia, you had an elite who had a lot of business interests with the western powers and that have a long history of cooperating, even on a security level, with western powers.
That allowed western powers to have some say in the process. It gave them leverage not over the president at the time, but over some of the generals around him to actually say, “Look, this situation is untenable. This is unacceptable. You need to do something about it.” The civil society in Tunisia was also far more structured. They have a history of contact with the West. Many of the elite spoke a number of languages, not only Arabic and French. And when you speak a different language, you also have partaken part of the culture. You are exposed to the realities in that country and in that part of the world.
So that allowed them to actually build up a system of civil society that was far more advanced than what you have seen elsewhere in the region. So people therefore you know, and outside Tunisia had some say in the process. They could mediate. They could pressure. And they could help guide the process. In Egypt, the same thing happened on a different scale. But it was still the same process. America had a lot of contact with the Egyptian army, with the Egyptian political apparatus. And that allowed the American administration to have leverage. It wasn´t easy to use that leverage, by the way.
It took a bit of work. But when they made a decision and you know, they´ve managed to actually, you know, convince people to detach themselves from [former Egyptian President Hosni] Mubarak. So it also worked because of that connection. In a country like Yemen, you also have some contact. And America had some leverage. And Saudi [Arabia] had some leverage. And that was used, as well, to facilitate a solution. It didn´t solve the problem, because Yemen had other issues as well at stake.
But at least it eased the way of [former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah] Saleh out and transformed the conflict from one issue to another. In Libya, the U.S. and France were willing to intervene. And that was sort of a different story. They took an early line on the responsibility to protect. And they decided to push [former Libyan President Muammar] Gaddafi out. It was an easier situation to intervene simply because Gadhafi´s army was really in bad shape and decrepit. And the potential risks were really few in that sense.
And still, the process of intervention was not easy. And it took longer than everyone imagined. And that´s a problem with every military campaign. Unpredictable things always happen. In Syria now, our situation is very different. You have a country that had a very minimal relationship with western powers. No western security apparatus or political government had any say, basically, with [Syrian President Bashar] Assad or any leverage with Assad. The government of Assad lived under isolation for such a long time.
It’s cozying up you know, its close relationships — it had a close relationship only with Iran and Russia and China, governments that are not interested in change in Syria at all. The only government that was pro-west that that Assad had a good relationship with was Turkey. But that was a new trend. It was not yet a highly developed relationship. Security cooperation and military cooperation was not yet sophisticated enough. So Turkey did not have as much leverage as people thought. And its leverage was outweighed by you know, what Iran, the leverage that Iran and Russia had.
Ammar Abdulhamid is a Syrian human rights activist who in 2003 founded the Tharwa Foundation, a grassroots organization that enlists local activists and citizen journalists to document conditions in Syria. In response to his activities, the Syrian government subjected Abdulhamid to repeat interrogation and threats. In September 2005, he and his family were forced into exile in the United States. From his home in Maryland, Abdulhamid remains one of the leading bloggers and commentators on events in Syria through the Syrian Revolution Digest.
Follow Ammar Ahbdulhamid on Twitter @Tharwacolamus and on his blog, Syrian Revolution Digest.
The Syrian Arab Republic originated as a secular, socialist state dominated by the Ba’ath party, an Arab nationalist movement. The state has since evolved into an autocracy headed by a single family and dominated by members of the minority Alawite sect, a branch of Shia Islam.
The Ba’ath Party took power in Syria in a series of coups d’état in the 1960s and 1970s. One of the leaders of those coups, Hafez al-Assad, became president in 1971 and led the country until his death in 2000. Under Assad, Alawites assumed control over the state security forces. In 1982, Assad’s forces stormed the city of Hama to brutally suppress a Sunni rebellion, killing thousands of civilians.
Following the death of Hafez al-Assad, his son, Bashar al-Assad, was elected president by a referendum in which he ran unopposed, officially garnering 97 percent of the vote. He was reelected in 2007, again with 97 percent of the vote.
The Syrian government is one of the world’s most brutal and restrictive. From 1963 to 2011, the government operated under an “Emergency Law,” which suspended many constitutional protections of civil liberties. The government continues to use arbitrary detention and torture against political opponents, and operates through an extensive internal security apparatus, including secret police. The government controls most of the country’s media outlets, and access to the Internet is permitted only through state-operated servers. The minority Kurdish population has been continually discriminated against and repressed.
Influenced by movements in Egypt and Tunisia, large opposition protests took place across Syria in 2011. The government responded with a harsh crackdown. Security forces fired on protestors, killing thousands. The crackdown led the Arab League to suspend Syria’s membership. The Assad regime attempted to appease dissenters through a series of low-level and largely inconsequential reforms in 2011 and 2012. However, the conflict has escalated into full-fledged civil war with both liberal and Islamic militias being formed to fight against the Assad regime. The Assad regime has continued to attempt to defeat the opposition using air strikes and heavy artillery to attack rebel-held neighborhoods. Freedoms of association, assembly, and the press were restricted even further as the government attempted to quell the uprising. Over a million people have been either internally displaced or fled the country as refugees.
In the summer of 2013, it was confirmed that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons to attack civilians. Over 600 people were killed in one such attack in the Ghouta suburb of Damascus using a nerve agent confirmed to be sarin. The Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons drew international attention and resulted in a renewed international focus on the nation and its civil conflict.
Freedom House rates Syria as “not free” noting that conditions even prior to the 2011 uprising and subsequent civil war were, at best, abysmal. It earned the worst possible ratings of seven in both the political rights and civil liberties categories. Conditions since the 2011 uprising have only deteriorated, and civil freedoms are restricted under the fear of violence. Freedom House has also expressed concern over rising sectarian tensions and massive displacement.