An Urgently Necessary Briefing on Syria

Photo by Patrick Feller | CC BY 2.0

Photo by Patrick Feller | CC BY 2.0

 

1. Syria is country about the size of Washington state, with an extraordinarily long, well-documented and glorious history, and central role in the emergence of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Before the current war, it had a population of around 22 millions. It has never threatened and poses no threat to the United States.

It is a secular, constitutional republic recognized diplomatically by the United Nations and has diplomatic and usually cordial relations with Russia, Iran, China, India, Japan, Brazil, South Africa, the Philippines, Argentina, Tanzania, Cuba, Egypt, Iraq, Algeria, Oman, etc. It has historically been a battleground of Arab, Iranian and Turkish peoples, at different times a part of the Persian Empire, the Arab-led Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates, or the Ottoman Empire. It fell under French colonial administration after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire (centered on what is now Turkey) in the course of World War I. It was briefly declared a kingdom under the Arab Emir Feisal until the French drove him out of Damascus in 1920.

Thereafter the League of Nations awarded France a  “mandate” to govern Syria (including Lebanon, which the French made a separate state). This colonial administration continued to 1946. After independence from France, political parties representing merchants and intellectuals from Damascus or Aleppo vied for power while the Communist Party was (to Washington’s alarm) tolerated. The…

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