"Krone" commentary

Syria’s heavy legacy from 1920

Analyzed for the "Krone": foreign policy expert Kurt Seinitz

(Bild: stock.adobe.com, Krone KREATIV)

If you want to assess what the future holds for a state in transition, it helps to look back into history. It leads to the British-French division of the Arab heritage of the Ottoman Empire.

Syria-Lebanon fell to France. In 1920, Paris split its new colony into six pseudo-states - whether for the good of the peoples or according to the principle of divide and rule remains to be seen. This resulted in the states of Damascus, Aleppo, the Alawite and Druze states, Alexandrette (which later fell to Turkey) and what later became Lebanon.

Uprisings against the French followed. The "Syrian Federation" never came to rest. In order to postpone, if not prevent, independence efforts, France mixed the pseudo-states into small alliances with each other (or against each other).

After independence, politicians repeatedly faced the problem of how to keep the state together. They resorted to violence. One bloody coup d'état followed the next.

The Alawites, who were related to the Shiites, formed the lower, often discriminated against minority. The French offered them promotion in the army because they were reliable. As a result, Alawites are still overrepresented in the army today - Air Force General Assad-Father staged a coup to power.

Every new leadership has to ensure that the state does not disintegrate. A mammoth task. A federal structure would be logical.