We know that today's Syrian civil war has completely become a battlefield for major forces. But at first, the Syrian civil war was not a complicated war. To put it simply, at first it was just a struggle between the Assad government and the opposition for their own political opinions. Then, why is there an opposition force in Syria that is engaged in a continuous struggle with the Syrian government represented by Assad?
In fact, this is related to the international environment since the founding of Syria.
After World War I, the Arabs, under the leadership of the Hashemite family, established the Great Syrian State and the Iraqi State in order to drive away Britain and France who tried to carve up the Middle East. After a series of complicated negotiations and struggles, Syrians did get rid of the British and French aggressors as they wished, but in the process, France left Syria with an advanced system.
For Syria, a country with little independent experience for thousands of years, the * * * system is a bit too advanced. Therefore, although they live under the framework of this system, they do not have any spirit of harmony with constitutionalism. So they intend to let King Faisal of Iraq govern the country first, so as to gain more time and opportunities to improve their national system.
Soldiers in the Arab-Israeli conflict
However, just as they were about to finish the preparatory work, the Jewish problem suddenly stirred up: the whole Arab world was defeated in the first confrontation with Israel, which made Syria begin to accuse the government of incompetence. As a result, successive coups began to disrupt the deployment of the Syrian government. Finally, a new political group came to power. They abandoned their original plan to merge with Iraq and took refuge in the Egyptian camp. Since then, Syria has officially announced that it has turned to the socialist side.
However, the orientation of the government cannot dominate the will of the whole country. Political parties with different opinions began to appear in Syria, which led to military coups one after another. The domestic situation is still unstable, and the future of Syria is like stepping into a dead end, with no future in sight. At this moment, the appearance of a man broke the "wall blocking the alley" and pushed Syria to a new stage.
This man is Hafez of Alawite school? Assad.
Hafez? Assad
Alawite originally belonged to a branch of Shia, and gradually evolved into an independent faction in the long history. But in a broad sense, it still belongs to Shia, which is incompatible with Sunni, another faction of Islam. Before Assad ascended the presidency, Alawites were a minority among Syrian nationals and had been oppressed and discriminated by Sunnis. However, after Assad came to power, they gradually infiltrated the top of the country under the appointment of Assad, and finally oppressed the dominant Sunnis.
As a result, Assad has planted his influence in every corner of the political arena, and the Syrian government has become more and more authoritarian. Soon, people began to realize that the Syrian government led by Assad seems to be developing in the direction of "dictatorship". Then, the worship of leaders that began to appear in Syria proved this point. Finally, the original system of * * * was replaced. Assad firmly held the financial power in his own hands, and soon attracted the dissatisfaction of Sunnis who advocated the rule of Islamic law and Baath Party who advocated democracy and harmony.
Sunni member
But Assad's dictatorship is not without merit. Its advantage is that leaders have absolute decision-making power. Therefore, when there was a heated debate on the direction of asset investment in China, Assad made the final decision and built a huge Tabuka dam on the Euphrates River at a cost of 340 million US dollars, which directly stimulated Syria's economic and industrial development. At the same time, Assad relaxed his control over the economy and gave private enterprises room to live. Soon, the financial industry, import and export trade and so on also developed in Syria. For a time, Syria's economic development entered a high-speed track.
Under such a hopeful situation, the internal struggle in Syria has gradually stopped. Because everyone was preoccupied with the development of the country, instead of confrontation and division, the debate about democracy and dictatorship was temporarily shelved, and the situation in Syria began to stabilize.
But it didn't take long for people to find that the surface of national prosperity actually hides the root of corruption. Because Alawites are rooted in high-level power and occupy a large number of state-owned resources; The secret communication between private enterprises and the government has aggravated political corruption. As a result, domestic unrest reappeared. This time, people began to point the finger at the Alawites as a whole, believing that the country was in turmoil because the heretical demon-Assad ruled the people. Therefore, in order to help people eradicate heresy, Sunnis first attacked and launched an armed struggle against the Assad government.
Sunni militants
Since 1976, the situation in Syria has become increasingly difficult to control. Sunnis organized an assassination team to assassinate government employees and Alawites. By 1980, there was even an assassination of President Assad. As a result, the government forces began to take crazy revenge on the opposition. They shot and killed local civilians in the city where the assassination took place, and broke into the Sunni town of Hama twice to slaughter Sunni members, which finally temporarily stabilized the situation.
The riots and assassinations made Assad feel that he should not relax his control over the government, so he tightened his power, which led to the decline of the Syrian economy. People began to complain, so the government had to relax the economy again, which returned to the starting point of the 1976 riots. The development and situation in Syria seems to have fallen into an infinite loop for a time.
In 2000, Assad died in such a situation that he gradually lost control. His son Bashar succeeded the president and began to plan reforms in an attempt to reverse the chaotic situation in the country. However, just when he put the reform on the agenda, he found that the dictatorship of his father Assad left an irreparable mess for this country!
Bashar
Because of Assad's long-term dictatorship, Syria's political system has become rigid because of his long-term independent operation. Therefore, the first thing Bashar did after he took office should not be to carry out reform, but to firmly hold the political power in his own hands. But Bashar did not do this, so his reform met with many obstacles from the beginning, and even in the end it could not be carried out completely. In the end, people expressed greater disappointment with the new president, and even those who had supported him stood in the opposition camp.
By this time, it can be said that the Syrian government has basically lost the hearts of the people. As a result, a greater turmoil began to brew among the people. Bashar's solution to these problems turned out to be following his father's cruel repression.
As the saying goes, "shine on you is better than blue". In the face of endless domestic riots, Bashar took more severe repression measures. Moreover, every time there is a riot, the repression methods of government forces are even more cruel. Gradually, the demonstrators realized that peaceful means could no longer realize their desire for democracy. Therefore, they began to use force to overthrow the dictatorial national government. Since then, the violent movement has become the mainstream of the domestic situation in Syria.
2011March, in the southern Syrian city of Deraa, opponents opened the source of violent resistance and fought back against the arrogant police. Soon, this incident led to riots in other parts of the country, and the death toll soared. In June, civilians began to attack the police station and seized the weapons needed for armed resistance. What surprised the Bashar government even more was that because most of the soldiers at the bottom of the army came from Sunnis, the main force in the opposition, the troops they sent to suppress the riots began to mutiny.
This storm has made the essence of the two factions clearer. As a result, the turmoil in Syria has gradually changed from a struggle between democracy and dictatorship to a religious struggle between Sunnis and Shiites. At the end of July, a number of former Syrian military officers formed a new armed group, the Syrian People's Liberation Army, marking the formal establishment of anti-government armed forces.
At this time, because the opposition advocated democracy, their movement won the support of many people in the world. But while the supporters were still discussing how to help them, the civil war in Syria quietly began in such an extremely chaotic situation.