Years of coup and deception.. How did the bloody sectarian state arise in modern Syria?!

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Arab countries were in a state of boiling and shock, due to the wrong policies they were exposed to by the Ottomans during the period of the Union and Progress government at times, and by the Arabs themselves at other times, and they are the ones who united an important part with the British policy in the region that aimed To control, occupy and dismantle these countries on an ethnic and national basis, and because of the change of the old world and its empires in the midst of World War I (1914-1918 AD), and the rise of the English and French powers, they decided to divide the Arab countries according to the famous “Sykes-Picot” agreement in 1916 AD. .

Syria

was among the countries that were constantly exposed to currents of migrations, wars and confrontations, because it was among the countries of the “Fertile Crescent” in which empires have always coveted since ancient times. Syrian and Valentine in general with this sectarian file, especially in the modern era, according to their political and intellectual interests, and a strike against any unity between these “mosaic”, which led to catastrophic results in the modern history of Syria. How did the sectarian and minority issue arise in modern Syria? And how did these sects enter for decades in a war of breaking bones? And what are the consequences? What are the most prominent sects that controlled the Syrian state? How did this happen and why? That is a date that we must stand with in our next lines.

During the nineteenth century, the situation of religious minorities was strongly affected as a result of political interference in the internal affairs of the Ottoman Empire by France, England and Russia, who imposed themselves as protectors of religious minorities. France claimed the right to protect Maronite Christians in Lebanon, and the Russian government claimed a similar right to protect Roman Christians The Orthodox were subordinate to the Ottoman Sultan, while Britain had special good relations with the Druze and the Jews[1].

On the other hand, this foreign protection brought them a deep hatred on the part of the Ottoman Empire, and even the majority of the population of Sunni Muslims who considered some of them – as the historian Albert Hourani says – “potential traitors, a source of weakness, agents of European politics, and a threat to the Ottoman Empire and the Islamic nation in general.” [2] Thus, rumors and foreign interference in that century led to poor relations between religious minorities in Syria.

When the Ottoman Empire was defeated in the First World War (1914-1918 AD), and its forces were forced to leave Syria in the months of 1918 AD, and the Arab forces of Sharif Hussein were allied with the English in the Arab region led by his sons Faisal and Abdullah, Faisal bin Al Hussein was declared king Constitutionally on Syria on October 1, 1918 AD, but France and Britain quickly turned against this agreement with the Arabs, and implemented their famous “Sykes-Picot” agreement so that Syria and Lebanon fell under the French mandate on July 24, 1920 AD, which will last 26 years. In Syria, the horrors of the French occupation and its malicious games [3].

In the era of the French Mandate, sectarian loyalties were deliberately incited to prevent or limit the emergence of an independent Syrian state. On the other hand, the phenomenon of separatism and specialization between religious and national minorities was encouraged by granting them autonomy in areas where those minorities constituted the local majority. Based on this policy, the The Latakia region, in which the majority is aligned with the Alawites, and the Jabal Al-Druze region, which is dominated by the Druze sect, had their own government for a period during the French occupation, and they were considered autonomous from the Syrian Republic, and it was declared under the sovereignty of the occupation[4].

As for the Jazira region in the north-east, where the Christian communities represented a force not to be reckoned with, and where the Kurds were a local majority for them, they did not obtain formal autonomy under the French occupation, but the region was placed under the direct French administration, and the aspirations of the Kurds towards achieving autonomy were encouraged.

The Dutch orientalist Nicholas Van Dam believes that as part of the policy of “divide and rule”, the French encouraged the recruitment of special factions from the Alawites, Druze, Kurds, Circassians and other minorities who then formed what was known as the “Special Forces for the Near East”, which were used to maintain order and suppress internal strife. Because these forces were made up of minorities, this increased the feeling of domination among the Arab-speaking Sunni majority, and differences between religious and ethnic minorities were raised by the French who were supporting one tribal leader against the other, and the “closed society” system that is based on the rivalry of sects has remained Its rise at the expense of the Arabic-speaking Sunni majority in Syria took effect during the first half of the twentieth century[5].