Tillman on Syria (from 2013)

 

Seth Barrett Tillman, ‘Responding to John McHugo’s Syria: Caught in a Trap,’ 64(2) History Today 66 (Feb. 2014), <http://ssrn.com/abstract=2312399> (posted on SSRN in 2013) (also available on EBSCOhost): 

Mr McHugo ends his article with: “During both periods [the Cold War and the Arab-Israeli conflict], many conspiracies were hatched against Syria. People often became paranoid in reaction to events.” (p.4)

If I were cheeky, I would point out that if “conspiracies” had—in fact—been “hatched” against Syria, then it makes little sense to call the Syrian people’s “reaction” “paranoid”. The people’s “reaction” should be described as “paranoid”, if and only if, there were no such “conspiracies”. Again, if I were cheeky, I would point out McHugo’s incoherence and leave it at that.

But I am not so cheeky.

Adopting the language of conspiracy without specifics of who and what, and when and where, simply means that one has given up substantive efforts to understand the world around him. And when a Western (would be) historian adopts the language of conspiracy in regard to the Middle East, it simply means that the Western historian has given up any effort to understand current events in favour of an oft-repeated and long-discredited narrative of certain less than wholesome elements of the so-called “Arab street” and the Ba’ath party. As Fouad Ajami explained:

The troubles and irresponsibility of the Ba’ath [Party] [in Syria] had played no mean part in the malady of the pre-1967 years. The Ba’athists had urged unity but had conspired against it after it materialized .... [Sami al-] Jundi’s account has the power of a genre of African fiction .... The theme is the bright nationalist vision ending in betrayal. The main characters begin as aspiring young men full of promise; they turn into tormentors and murderers who end up being tormented and murdered by others.

Fouad Ajami, The Arab Predicament 49–50 (1981). McHugo’s narrative has been put forward by those who realize that their present is a failure; that they do not understand their own past and how it shaped the present; and that seeks, in every instance, to deflect current and past failures onto others (preferably foreigners, Jews, and other disloyal—if not “traitorous”—domestic minorities). In the past, those who had adopted this narrative were almost exclusively party functionaries of the Ba’ath [Party] and other panegyrists for pan-Arabism. Why McHugo would promote this moribund narrative in the pages of History Today is a mystery. 

McHugo may genuinely believe the roots of this conflict “flow[]” (p.4) from the Cold War and the Arab-Israeli conflict. But those who are fighting in it, they think they are fighting for or against the Assad clan and Alawite oppression or are fighting under the banner of Islam in a Sunni-Shia (Alawite-Druze) sectarian civil war. See [Fouad] Ajami, [The] Arab Predicament 51 (1981) (“[N]o ideology will make the Alawites and Sunnis of Syria forget their primary loyalties.”). The Cold War and the Arab-Israeli conflict (and, for that matter, European colonialism) did not cause the current Syrian civil war; rather, the Cold War/Arab-Israeli conflict were a historical blip: a relatively peaceful intermission within the greater and long-running ethnic and sectarian conflict that is the Middle East.

Seth Barrett Tillman, ‘Tillman on Syria (from 2013),’ New Reform Club (Dec. 22, 2024, 1:52 AM), <https://reformclub.blogspot.com/2024/12/tillman-on-syria-from-2013.html>;