When I was a student long ago in the early 1970s I was fortunate to be able to travel in the summer vacations to Turkey, Syria, Iran, the Lebanon, Egypt and Ethiopia. Apart from the last it would be difficult to visit those places now, travelling as widely and remotely as we did then. In Syria we explored Damascus, its many churches (some in the Street Called Straight), we saw the gate where Paul was lowered down in a fig basket, and went out to the ruined desert city of Palmyra; we travelled north to the crusader castle of the Krak des Chevaliers and on to Aleppo – like Damascus, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, where Abraham was supposed to have watered his flocks en route for his new home, a beautiful place with a great castle and a wonderful bazaar.
You can read elsewhere in this magazine about the ‘sad story’ of Syria now. Religiously Syria is a complicated place. There is a sizeable Christian minority (about 10% or 2.5million) made up of a variety of different and ancient Orthodox Churches, uniate or Catholic orthodox, and a few Protestant denominations. There are also many famous and ancient monasteries. About 60% of the population is Sunni Muslim and 13% Shia (including the Alawites to whom the Assad regime belongs). The nation states of the Middle East are of relatively recent invention, carved out of the old Ottoman Empire by the British and French after the First World War. Their religions and their religious differences are of far more ancient origin.
Sunni Islam is the largest branch of Islam – research in 2010 suggests that the present worldwide Sunni population consists of between 75-90% of all Muslims. After the death of the Prophet Muhammad, Islam was divided between those who accepted as his successor (the first Caliph) Abu Bakr – the Sunni Muslims – and those who didn’t – the Shi’ites. The latter accepted Muhammad’s son-in-law, Ali, as the first Caliph, whereas the Sunni’s saw him as the fourth in succession. Shi-ites do not accept the first three Caliph’s as supported by the Sunnis. Sunnis believed that the Quran teaches that succession to Muhammad should be according to the consensus of the whole community. Shi’ites believed the succession should be by family descent from the Prophet. Often violent conflict arose between the two groups and though both accepted the Quran, they had different views on Hadith – the collections of tradition and interpretation of the Quran. Nowadays, Shia majority countries are Iran, Iraq, Azerbaijan and Bahrain. They also form a sizeable minority in the Lebanon, Yemen, and Kuwait and a smaller minority in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Afghanistan. They also constitute just over a third of the Muslim population of the Middle East.
In Syria the Assad family and many of its government and army leaders are from the Alawite branch of Shi-itism. Alawites were founded by a religious leader of the 8th century, Ibn Nusayr and represent a more mystical branch of Islam, though the Assad family is now more or less secularised. The rise of the Assad family to power in 1970 was a shocking development for the Sunni majority of the Syrian population, though the authoritarian, secularised government only cracked down on political dissidents and tolerated religious minorities including Christians more than previous regimes. Islamist insurgencies by the Muslim brotherhood were fiercely resisted.
Though the situation is complicated by many different factors, there is without doubt a strong sectarian dimension to the Syrian conflict. Though it might seem strange to us, it is understandable that many Orthodox Christians have supported the Assad regime because in the past it has more or less guaranteed their safety. Because of that support they are now widely persecuted by the rebels. The Christian population of Homs has been almost entirely forced to leave. Back in April the Greek and Syriac Archbishops of Aleppo were kidnapped by an armed Chechen group – many of the rebels come from Islamic groups outside Syria. Because of the 500,000 Palestinians living in Syria, Hamas has announced its support for the Syrian opposition, as does Turkey because of the minority of Turkmen Syrians. On the other side Shi’ite dominated Iran and Hezbollah ( a militant Shi-ite group based in the Lebanon) have intervened on behalf of the government. The Sunni opposition groups see their role as removing a secular regime and making Syria a Muslim state. Even so, many secular Sunnis continue to serve in the government armed forces, despite massive Sunni desertions. In addition, many Sunni citizens do not support the opposition as they fear and suffer from widespread devastation as a result of the civil war and are alarmed by the idea of a future Islamist Syria. United Nations human rights investigators find more and more evidence that the civil war is being fought in ethnic and religious terms. “Feeling threatened and under attack, ethnic and religious minority groups have increasingly aligned themselves with parties to the conflict, deepening sectarian divides”. (Time Magazine, 21.12.12)
The complexity is enormous and the suffering on all sides is very great. And it is against this background that America and Great Britain are having to decide whether they will intervene at least with a rocket attack on Government military targets in order to show the Assad regime that they cannot use illegal chemical weapons without suffering the consequences. The consequences of such an action, however, are very unclear. Assad’s position might be seriously weakened but with his back to the wall we cannot predict what he is likely to do. It is possible that the non Alawit part of the army would further desert him but even in that case it is not clear that the conflict would end and that the external Shi-ite support for the regime would leave the field to the Sunnis. Nor is it clear what sort of regime a Sunni dominated government would be and how it would treat the remaining minorities. Nor again is it clear what impact that would have on the wider situation in the Middle East. Might it for example make it impossible for the new Iranian Prime Minister to begin to restore some kind of dialogue with the West as he has shown signs of wanting to do?
When the Iraq war broke out there was much discussion by the churches of the theory of a just war initiated by Thomas Aquinas. War must first be waged by a properly constituted authority, such as a democratically elected state government, where the state action is supported by a majority of the people. It must be waged for a good and just purpose rather than for gain or self interest. It can be waged, for example, to restore a good that has been lost or in punishment for a government that has perpetrated an evil act (like chemical warfare), though there must be evidence that the damage done by such an evil act is lasting, grave and certain. It must be fought for the right reason – the restoration of peace as soon as possible. Further schools of thought added the ideas that war must only be declared as a final resort in order to prevent a greater evil. All other means of reconciliation must first have been exhausted. The response must be commensurate with the evil, and violence must not be used more than is strictly necessary. Violent action must not outweigh the evil which is the cause of war. There must be moral limits to action – civilians should as far as is possible not be harmed nor prisoners killed. There must be a serious prospect of success.
The application of these principles in this situation is not easy. It is not proposed that war should be declared on Syria. It is not envisaged that Syria could retaliate for whatever action is taken, though the increase of terrorist attacks in retaliation is a strong possibility. It is not at all clear what good might be achieved by such an attack, or that Assad will respond to being punished in a positive way. Certainly other ways of resolving the situation have been tried but it is not clear that negotiation has entirely failed. I do not know whether we are being asked to intervene in this way by a significant numbers of Syrian leaders whose communities have suffered from chemical weapons. It is not clear that peace would be restored as soon as possible nor do we yet know that targets can be hit without causing harm to civilians. And what would success in these circumstances amount to?
On the basis of such arguments it is not at all clear that the action being proposed by the British and American governments is justified. Of course there is a moral argument to be made for going to the defense of the victims of extreme bullying but the Middle East is not a playground and we must be absolutely sure that any action we take is not going to result in even greater suffering and longer lasting conflict in a region whose divisions are, as we have seen, so deeply ingrained and so hard of resolution.
We must pray for wisdom for our leaders, relief for all victims of suffering, and for the raising up of courageous men and women of peace.
The Vicar Writes
Stephen Tucker