Syria in the present day is essentially the most dynamic diplomatic venue within the Center East as a result of it’s the most strategically contested one – because it has been for millennia. The end result of the competitors to manage Syrian governance and alliances will outline political traits within the Levant and the broader Center East for years to return.
Three concentric circles of home, regional, and international actors compete for energy and affect in Syria due to the nation’s distinctive place and standing. It’s a uncommon full and consequential Arab nation, attributable to its human and pure sources, strategic geography, and political, cultural, and ethnic ties within the Center East and the world.
Syria in the present day, even in its dilapidated state after half a century of autocratic abuse and 13 years of battle, hosts tons of of diplomats, businesspeople, civic activists, and carpetbaggers. However this isn’t new.
The individuals and rulers of the land of Syria have skilled this all through the final 5,000 years, ever since Damascus and Aleppo emerged as productive, vibrant, and strategic city centres within the third millennium BC. All through recorded settled human historical past, the land and folks of Syria have constantly generated information, worth techniques, meals, wealth, tradition, expertise, and identities which have made their land a strategic and coveted international crossroads.
A visit by land throughout Syria reveals overlapping networks of roads, forts, farms, water techniques, and concrete centres which have lengthy serviced the east-west and north-south commerce routes linking Asia, Europe and Africa. Alongside them stand Syria’s main entrepot cities – Aleppo, Damascus, Homs, Hama, Deir az-Zor, Palmyra, Deraa, Latakia, and others – which have performed outstanding roles within the nation’s historical past. Various ethnic and spiritual teams coexisted in these strategic city centres – Sunnis, Shia, Alawites, Druze, Christians, Armenians, Jews, Arabs, Kurds, Circassians, and some others. All through historical past, they lived collectively by negotiating variations via formal and casual mechanisms primarily based in these cities.
Syria has at all times been and stays particular as a result of it’s the most full Arab nation that enjoys all of the belongings of real statehood and nationhood. These embody fertile land and water sources; mineral and agricultural wealth; an industrial base; human wealth in expert residents, proficient managers, and entrepreneurial businesspeople; a pluralistic citizenry throughout vibrant and artistic city centres, alongside deeply anchored villages and rural settlements; a robust nationwide and cultural identification; and, entry by land and sea to the wealth and commerce routes of three continents.
Additionally it is a consequential nation due to its intrinsic wealth and its strategic geography. Historical and fashionable empires – from Greece, Rome, Persia, Byzantium, and India to Britain and France, to not point out Russia and america – have fought to manage Syria as a way to safe entry to its sources and vital cross-continental routes that traverse it. If you wish to get a really feel for a way that works, go spend just a few days within the Damascus Sheraton Lodge.
Greater than another Arab land, together with fashionable Egypt and energy-rich Gulf states, Syria can be consequential as a result of it emits throughout the area waves of emotion and identification that replicate what peculiar Arabs search as a way to fulfil each their human and civic aspirations. At numerous moments previously century, these sentiments emanated from the realms of pluralism, constitutionalism, Islamism, anti-colonialism, and Arabism.
Syria can be vital for individuals around the globe to know as a result of its expertise reminds us in a single stroke of the complete fashionable Arab area’s strengths, weaknesses, failures, identities, and aspirations.
For millennia, “Syria” meant the larger Higher Syria, or Bilad-el-Sham (“The Land of Sham”), which comprised a lot of the Levant and components of the Fertile Crescent territories that at the moment are Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, Palestine, and components of Turkey and Iraq.
It was truncated after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire by Franco-British imperial militarism that prevented the start of a constitutional monarchy anchored in an elected meeting in 1920. The next colonial-engineered state predictably suffered the identical troubles and vulnerabilities that outline most Arab international locations in the present day.
These embody: anti-colonial resistance and a battle for independence that by no means achieved full sovereignty; continuous overseas navy interventions; makes an attempt at consultative and participatory decision-making that at all times led to dictatorships and navy rule; bouts of real improvement in training, healthcare, infrastructure, and financial development that finally stagnated and deteriorated, attributable to corruption, mismanagement, and lack of accountability; and pluralistic societies that usually succumbed to sectarian wars, stoked by exterior forces.
At this time, many Arab and different residents throughout our area comply with Syria’s transformation with hope and admiration. All of us need Syria to change into the fashionable Arab world’s first self-determinant, citizen-validated, and really democratic and sovereign state.
It’s not misplaced on any of us that Syria’s present management emanates from Islamist teams who have been battle-hardened in US-occupied Iraq and overthrew the regime of Bashar al-Assad with US, Israeli, Turkish, and different non-Syrian help. This solely heightens our cheering on Syrians to attain their bold targets.
Regional and worldwide powers that work extra time to affect the brand new Syrian management will use bribes, weapons, and subterfuge to make sure that the brand new Syria that emerges will align with them. If the brand new authorities resist, they’ll definitely face foreign-inspired and funded makes an attempt to overthrow them, as has occurred so typically previously throughout this area.
In a means, Syria’s battle for dignified, steady statehood in the present day is the delayed end result of the historic however quashed decade of mass Arab rebellion for democracy, pluralism, and equal rights for all. As in 1920, Syria in the present day additionally checks whether or not exterior powers can permit its residents to outline themselves, and set an instance for the remainder of the area. If there’s any Arab citizenry that may obtain this, it’s the Syrians, as a result of they’ve been practising for this second for five,000 years.
The views expressed on this article are the creator’s personal and don’t essentially replicate Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
