Baathist Butchers

Feb 8, 2012
Paul Iddon

Hama massacre, before and after - alrahalah.com

What the Hama massacre and the crushing of the Iraqi uprising in 1991 can teach us about the present situation in Syria.

The infamous Hama massacre in Syria and the brutal crushing of a large scale Shi'a uprising in Iraq in 1991 serve as dire warnings for what could transpire in Syria in the near future.

The Iraqi and Syrian Baathists

Iraq under Saddam Hussein was ruled with an iron fist. His Ba'athist apparatus used extreme and brutal forms of cruelty and violence to ensure the populace he ruled over were always frightened of his abject capriciousness.

His ruling regime was for the most part made up of the country's minority Sunni Islamic sect which oppressed and subverted Iraq's Shiite majority.

Syria has similarly been ruled by the Assad family since 1970. It too is made up of a disproportionately from the Alawite sect, which makes up a very small amount of the total Syrian population which itself is predominately Sunni.

The Hama Massacre

Exactly 30 years ago this month (February 1982) under the orders of Hafez al-Assad (the present Assad's father) the Syrian Army laid waste to the town of Hama under the pretext of quelling a revolt by the Sunni Muslim community.

This was done to quell an insurrection by the Muslim Brotherhood, the main political party that represented the Sunni Syrian Muslim majority. Hama was a major focal point in that insurrections campaign and its destruction essentially broke the insurrection that had started 6 years beforehand.

Personally supervised by Hafez's brother Rifaat Syrian Army units closed in and for 27 days bombarded and besieged the city. Rubble was searched for survivors and suspected sympathizers tortured and executed. The death toll is estimated to have been between 17,000 to 40,000 Syrian citizens.

The 1991 Shia Uprising in Iraq

Following the humiliating defeat of the Iraqi Army in the 1991 Persian Gulf War and their expulsion from Kuwait a large scale uprising in the Shia south broke out. It had a symbolic beginning with a frustrated tank officer returning from Kuwait to Basra arriving and firing a tank shell into a mural of Saddam.

The uprising quickly spread throughout the Shia south.

They expected the Americans whom had only been days earlier bombing their cities to come to their aid.

But to no avail.

Republican Guard forces loyal to Saddam massacred thousands through their utilization of helicopter gunships, killing at least 100,000 people and crushing the rebellion.

The mass graves of those killed were uncovered in 2003 following the intervention by the US led coalition.

Conclusion: Worrying Prospects

Whilst Saddam's Iraq and Hafez al-Assad's Syria were rivals (Syria agreed and did join the coalition against Iraq in 1991) the Baathist systems they employed were fundamentally the same.

Also the Baathist apparatus in Syria is strikingly similar in the manner that the army with its monopoly on heavy weaponry has been in a sense preparing for such an uprising for the past 40 years. Senior and commanding positions are therefore given to Baathist and Alawis loyalists making it harder for large swaths of the army to defect or conscientiously object.

So as in the case of Iraq in 1991 Assad could exert devastation upon the opposition and reduce large parts of the country to sheer abjection and depravity.

With this in mind one feels a heavy sense of nausea and cynicism when pondering what Syria's near future has in store for the Syrian people.