Sullivan: Syria Is Not a Country

Andrew Sullivan nails an important historical basis for the unrest in many countries in the Middle East on The Daily Dish.

Syria as we now know it was created by one Brit, Mark Sykes, and one Frenchman, Francois Georges-Picot in 1920. Originally, it included a chunk of Iraq (another non-country), but when oil was discovered there (in Mosul), the Brits wanted and got it. With that detail alone, you can see how valid the idea is of a Syrian “nation” is. Certainly no one living in Syria ever called the shots on the creation of the modern state. More to the point, it was precisely constructed to pit a minority group, the Shiite Alawites, againstthe majority, Sunni Arabs, with the Christians and the Druze and Kurds (also Sunnis) as side-shows. Exactly the same divide-and-rule principle applied to the way the Brits constructed Iraq. But there they used the Sunni minority to control the Shiite majority, with the poor Kurds as side-kicks again.

So "countries" like Syria and Iraq were created almost 100 years ago by fading Colonial powers pitting favored minority groups against oppressed majorities in order to maintain the influence of said Colonial powers?

You can see why colonial powers did this. How do they get a pliant elite of the inhabitants of their constructed states to do their bidding? They appeal to the minority that is terrified of the majority. They give that minority privileges, protection and military training. That minority, in turn, controls the majority. It’s a cynical policy that still reverberates today: the use of sectarianism as a means to maintain power. Over time, the Alawites in Syria and the Sunnis in Iraq entrenched their grip on the state and, as resentment of them by the majority grew, used increasingly brutal methods of oppression to keep the whole show on the road. You can see how, over time, this elevates sectarian and ethnic loyalties over “national” ones. Worse, it gives each group an operational state apparatus to fight over.

So what does this mean going forward for the region?

The reason we have such a brutal civil war right now is the same reason we still have a brutal civil war still going on in Iraq. The decades’ long, brutal oppression of a majority group has finally broken with the Arab Spring. All the tensions and hatreds and suspicions that built up in that long period of division and destruction are suddenly finding expression. Inevitably, this will mean much more sectarian bloodletting in the short, medium, and long run. It may mean an endless cycle of violence.

What are the implications of this for US foreign policy in the region?

America, the anti-imperial nation, has no business trying to make British colonial experiments endure into the 21st Century. No business at all. It’s a mug’s game – and no one in the region will ever, ever give the US credit or any tangible benefits for the Sisyphean task. We will be blamed for trying and blamed for not trying. We will be blamed for succeeding and blamed for failing.

Which is why, absent the threat to the US of the chemical weapons stockpiled in that “country”, the United States must resist any inclination to get involved or take responsibility. That’s why the CIA’s arming of the rebels is so self-destructive to this nation. Once you arm and train a foreign force, you are responsible in part for its fate. And that kind of responsibility – for a bankrupt America, with enormous challenges at home – is one we should pass to others. Which we have. What we need to do now is grasp the Russian offer with both hands and slap the CIA down. No responsibility doesn’t just mean no war. It also means no covert war.