SYRIAN INDEPENDENCE AND ITS AFTERMATH

This research paper discusses the internal political leadership and alignment of political forces during Syria's struggle to achieve national independence and its painful forty nine year aftermath (19461995). This paper has two main theses: (1) the activities of indigenous Syrian leaders and parties played a relatively minor role in the attainment of Syrian independence; and (2) Syria was illprepared for national independence and has largely been misruled since 1946. Politics during the latter period featured unstable governing elites and institutions, factionridden power struggles, sectarian strife, repression, especially after 1970, of important elements of Syrian society, and until the 1990s, relative economic stagnation. Today, Syria faces grave political, economic and social uncertainties.

Because of their history, Syrians developed very little sense of nationhood or political cohesion prior to 1946. Damascus was once the capital of the Arab world during the Ommayyad Caliphates (661750). The peoples who inhabited the lands which now comprise modern Syria were ruled for nearly thirteen hundred years by a succession of alien Arab, Christian Mongol, Egyptian, Ottoman Turk (15161918) and French rulers. The movement for Syrian independence was led by small groups of relatively well off citybred intellectuals and professionals, who dreamed primarily of Arab as opposed to Syri

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e first democratically elected government was hopelessly divided along religious lines. Further weakened by the Arab defeat in the 1948 Palestine War, it was overthrown by a bloodless coup in 1949. Its new head, the army Chief of Staff, was deposed and shot five months later. For fourteen years, power oscillated among temporary coalitions of army officers, politicians who represented the citybased merchant and landowner classes and a "hodgepodge of feuding minorities" (Kaplan 22). The Library of Congress study says that "rivalry among the country's religious and ethnic minorities has been a perennial source of instability" (Library of Congress 255). This chaos was detrimental to economic progress. Syria was then "an agricultural country in which the labor of two million peasants largely supported a million and a half city dwellers" (Mackey 282). The powerful landowning class opposed and diluted efforts at land reform. The population has risen from two and half million in 1940 to thirteen million in 1993. Despite recent improvements in agricultural yields, GNP per capita declined through most of the postindependence period (The Europa Yearbook 2932). Analysis From the middle 1950s until Hafez el Asad took power in 1970, ke
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Library Congress, Introduction Theses, Le Piano, Muslim Brotherhood, Palestine Arab, Jews Real, Ottoman Turk, Europa Yearbook, Ba'ath Lacquer, Chief Staff, syrian independence, library congress, syrian economy, economic progress, library congress study, congress study, religious ethnic, economy grew, christians jews, ba'ath party, middle east york, sheikh le piano, president sheikh le, le piano,
Approximate Word count = 1574
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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