Syria’s Psychological Trenches: A Nation’s Fragility Since Independence

There is arguably no parallel in the world to the Syrian Air Force pilot who targeted the civilian population of his own country with barrel bombs. This case is further complicated by the fact that these indiscriminate weapons, along with regular aerial bombardments, were heavily used in the eastern neighborhoods of Aleppo during the period of militant control, from July 2012 until the end of 2016. The complexity is heightened by the reality that these pilots were trained at the air academy located in Aleppo. This raises a profoundly disturbing question: How psychologically detached is this pilot from a place where he once lived, walked its streets, frequented its restaurants, enjoyed coffee and tea in its cafes, resided in its neighborhoods, interacted with its inhabitants, and perhaps even entered their homes?

To contextualize this, the internal conflict in Syria from 2011 to 2024 was distinct from the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939. While the Spanish conflict was a clear-cut ideological struggle between Republicans and Nationalists (right and left), with the potential for brothers to fight brothers, the Syrian conflict took on a different form. It pitted the regime against the opposition. While the regime’s supporters were diverse, its military-security apparatus was dominated by Alawites, a fact which was carefully orchestrated from the core of the Syrian regime’s decision-making. In contrast, the residents of Damascus experienced a different reality between 2012 and 2018 when Eastern Ghouta was relentlessly bombarded with artillery fired from Mount Qasioun, where the Republican Guard maintained military positions. Another harrowing experience was endured by the residents of Idlib, Jisr al-Shughour, and Ariha, who witnessed repeated airstrikes on the crowded Green Market. Furthermore, the looting of cities and towns after they were seized, often carried out by the army, was widespread. There were well-documented examples of this in Kassab in 2014 and Deir Ezzor in 2017. In 2017, the residents of Damascus saw military trucks laden with refrigerators, washing machines, and household goods coming from Western Ghouta.

In a parallel development, records from the security branches reveal that tens of thousands died from torture, starvation, or lack of medical care, in addition to the systematic executions of detainees. Consequently, of those who did not leave the prisons by December 2024, following the regime’s fall, approximately one hundred and ten thousand remain unaccounted for. This contrasts sharply with the aftermath of the 1979-1985 arrests; after the prisons were “cleansed” in 2005, only seven thousand emerged. These are the disappeared of Syrian prisons, and it is almost certain that all of them perished.

In 2013, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stated, “No regime has done to its people what the Syrian regime has done.” This statement, while descriptive of the regime’s brutality, is an understatement. The Syrian regime maintained a strong social base until its final days. This base included a significant percentage of Alawites, Christians, Ismailis, Druze, Sunni merchants and industrialists in the major cities, and the majority of the Sunni middle classes in those same cities. Remarkably, support for the regime among the Kurds was negligible.

This broad, cross-sectarian and cross-class social base of the former Syrian regime remained largely silent on the regime’s actions throughout the period of 2011-2024. Many of its supporters justified, or at least downplayed, the regime’s actions. In some instances, groups from the regime’s social base, operating under its supervision or with its tacit approval, committed massacres against neighbouring villages or towns, as occurred in the town of Houla in May 2012. Homs and its countryside represent a unique case, as it was the only Syrian area to experience widespread civil fighting, unlike the coastal cities. It’s likely that this explains the current tensions in Homs and its surrounding areas after the regime’s fall.

All of the above paints a picture of psychological trenches dividing Syrians, generating political ideas, strategies, and practices that surfaced during the Syrian catastrophe of 2011-2024. As the saying goes, “People are like minerals,” and “Minerals are tested by fire.” The Syrian regime, a master of manipulating the “minority scare” tactic, heavily exploited the Alawite-Sunni divide, and even played on the fear of Christian minorities from ‘Sunni Wahsh’ (Sunni monster). It can be argued that it achieved considerable success in both cases, even among many opponents of the Assad regime. Here, the psychological trench between Sunni loyalists of the Assad regime and its Islamist and leftist opponents cannot be explained solely by fear and phobias, but by the material interests driving this divide.

Furthermore, numerous Syrian psychological trenches exist, including an Arab-Kurdish one. However, this trench is not present within the social fabric where Arabs and Kurds intermingle, such as in the cities of Aleppo, Hasaka, Qamishli, or the Rukn al-Din district of Damascus. Instead, the opposing sides of this trench are the nationalist chauvinists from both groups, often intellectuals and ideologues, rather than the general populace. This psychological trench is largely absent among Arab leftists, the Kurdish left, parties such as the Democratic Union Party (PYD), or figures of Syrian Kurdish national identity like the late Hamid Darwish. In Syria, Arabs and Kurds generally experience better conditions than Kurds face in Iraq, Turkey, or Iran, and the historical injustices perpetrated by Syrian regimes since 1958 against Kurds – on national, cultural, political, and administrative levels – are often counterbalanced by existing social relationships.

However, taken as a whole, these aforementioned Syrian psychological trenches, including those as old as the one separating Damascus, Aleppo, Deir Ezzor, and their surrounding rural areas, revealed the inherent fragility of the Syrian national identity since the French departure in 1946. They signal the collapse, or at least the severe decline, of the Syrian national state that existed at that time, and point to the urgent need to construct a new Syrian national identity. The fact that this fragility manifested so intensely during the 2011-2024 holocaust demonstrates that it was not a product of those years alone. Instead, it was a pre-existing, powerful force. Otherwise, Syria would not have generated so much internal fuel for its own holocaust, attracting regional and international actors eager to cook their own agendas within its flames.