Muslim Brotherhood uprising in Syria
The uprising of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria from 1976 to 1982 was a series of armed uprisings by Sunni Islamists , mainly members of the Muslim Brotherhood , against the Ba'athist government of Syria under Hafiz al-Assad .
prehistory
After the coup in 1970 and the seizure of power by Hafiz al-Assad, Syria's economy suffered from inflation , corruption and a lack of funding from the Gulf states in the late 1970s . Added to this was the intervention in the Lebanese civil war on the part of Christian militias , both of left and secular forces as well as by conservative Sunnis was rejected. The increasing nepotism and the occupation of the military and intelligence leadership of the al-Assad family related Alawites alienated large sections of society, especially the politicized members of the middle class, in addition. This led to a chain of unrest, borne by various forces and grouped under the name Ahdath . They were carried by three different forces:
- a left-wing nationalist opposition alliance around Jamal al-Atassi , the "National Democratic Union", consisting of Nasserists as well as communist and Baathist splinter groups ,
- independent intellectuals, journalists, union leaders and liberal Islamic clergy who wanted to embark on a “third path” between the Assad government and the armed Islamist movement and
- the Sunni-Islamist movement, organized in the Muslim Brotherhood.
In late 1979, a wave of strikes and demonstrations swept across Syria. The government reacted with severity: In March 1980, the city of Jisr el-Shughur was shelled by government troops, leaving dozens of deaths. In protest, the opposition called for a general strike. The government responded with mass arrests and dissolved the unions by decree. In doing so, it destroyed the secular opposition. Remnants of the “National Democratic Union” could only continue working illegally. Aleppo was occupied by the military in April 1980, who shot at demonstrators and arrested thousands of people.
From then on, the leadership of the rebellion was with the Muslim Brotherhood.
Muslim Brotherhood in revolt
The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood has been in opposition since the Ba'ath Party's coup in 1963 because it rejected Ba'athist secularism . This defense has been strengthened since the coup of the military Ba'ath wing in 1966, which ousted the Sunnis Amin Hafez and instead brought an Alawite leadership around Salah Jadid to power. Despite their assurances to the contrary, the Muslim Brotherhood did not consider Alawis to be Muslim.
In the mid-1960s they began to set up conspiratorial groups for violent attacks, consisting of “Youth of Muhammad”, “Soldiers of Allah”, “el-Taliaa el-Moqatila” (Fighting Avant-garde) and the like. a. called. Initially, several of their leaders were executed. In 1976, Sheikh Adnan Aqlah took over and the groups went on to carry out attacks on Baathist and Alawite targets, which heightened interdenominational tensions. On June 16, 1979, the underground movement carried out the “Massacre at the Artillery School” in Aleppo, in which 50 Alawite cadets were killed. The Alawites were deliberately killed, other student officers let the perpetrators go. It should be a starting signal for a popular uprising like in Iran against the Shah. Assad responded by first bringing opposing forces in the Ba'ath Party and among the Alawis under control. After bloody fighting between the armed arm of the Muslim Brotherhood and troops loyal to the government, Assad initially succeeded in suppressing their revolt. Their organization, with an estimated 10,000 to 30,000 members and around 1,000 underground fighters, remained intact, they gave themselves a new leadership, which also included Ali Sadreddin al-Bajanuni .
In June 1980, Hafez al Assad narrowly escaped an assassination attempt by the Muslim Brotherhood. The next day, Hafez's brother Rifaat al-Assad ordered loyal special forces to kill several hundred Muslim Brotherhood imprisoned in Tadmur prison. A month later, "Law No. 49" was promulgated that membership of the Muslim Brotherhood was punishable by death.
The Muslim Brotherhood responded by forming an Islamic front that was supposed to put the resistance on a broader basis. Sunni and Alawite Baathists were also addressed through pamphlets. Attacks on Alawites, perceived as pillars of the regime, continued, however. In 1981 the organization carried out attacks on the prime minister's office, the air force headquarters, a center of Russian military advisors and a military recruitment agency in the capital. Several hundred civilians were injured in the latter attack.
According to a US American intelligence study, it was planned to coordinate an uprising in several Syrian cities with a coup d'état by Alawite military, who felt obliged to the first Alawite ruler Salah Jadid , and thus overthrow Assad. The conspiracy in the military apparatus was exposed in early 1982. Thereafter, the Syrian security forces began mass searches in Dar'a and Hama to dig up the underground structure of the Muslim Brotherhood. They then decided to start the uprising in their stronghold of Hama.
Your leadership left their exile in Brussels to coordinate the fighting in Syria. On February 2, 1982 mosque loudspeakers in Hama urged the population to participate in jihad and announced in which mosques weapons would be distributed. At the same time, their armed units began attacks on government buildings. The government responded with air strikes and the dispatch of special forces under Assad's brother Rifaat . They consisted of Alawites and Kurds. After they had recaptured the city with tanks and artillery, they completely destroyed several districts and carried out numerous massacres of the Hamas residents, which are estimated to have killed 10,000 to 40,000 people.
consequences
Hafiz al-Assad succeeded in crushing both the secular and religious opposition and, with the Hama massacre, created an omnipresent climate of fear from which the entire Syrian opposition has not recovered since then. Precisely because the events were taboo [Document?] , They kept the Syrians in a collective fear for a long time. As a result of the targeted attacks on Alawis by the Muslim Brotherhood, interdenominational tensions deepened in Syria.
literature
- Middle East Watch: Syria Unmasked: The Suppression of Human Rights by the Asad Regime. Yale University Press, New Haven / London 1991, ISBN 0-300-05786-5 .
- Olivier Carré, Gérard Michaud: Les Frères musulmans: Egypte et Syrie (1928–1982) . Gallimard, Paris 1983, ISBN 2070259846 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e Aron Lund, The Ghosts of Hama, Swedish International Liberal Center, June 2011, pp. 7–10 (PDF; 3.8 MB)
- ↑ a b c Defense Intelligence Agency, Syria: Muslim Brotherhood Pressure Intensifies, May 1982, pp. 6-13 ( Memento of the original of December 24, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 1.3 MB)
- ^ New York Times, June 10, 2012
- ↑ Nikolaos van Dam: The Struggle for Power in Syria - Politics and Society under Asad and the Ba'th Party , New York, 2011, pp. 107-108
- ↑ Îsmet Şerîf Wanlî , Kurdistan and the Kurds, Volume 3, Göttingen 1988, ISBN 3-922197-23-X , p. 15 f.
- ↑ Tom Blanton, History Repeats Itself as Tragedy, Foreign Policy, September 21, 2012 ( Memento of the original of July 29, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
