1982 Hama massacre | |||||||
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Part of the Islamist uprising in Syria | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Hafez al-Assad Rifaat al-Assad Hikmat al-Shihabi Shafiq Fayadh Ali Haydar Ali Douba Mohammed al-Khouli |
Adnan Uqla (MIA) Sa'id Hawwa Muhammad al-Bayanuni Adnan Saad al-Din | ||||||
Units involved | |||||||
• 3rd Armoured Division • 10th Armoured Division • 14th Special Forces Division | Unknown | ||||||
Strength | |||||||
Defense Companies: 3 brigades (12,000 soldiers) Syrian Arab Army: 4 brigades (15,000 soldiers) Total: About 30,000 soldiers | Fewer than 2,000 armed volunteers[citation needed] | ||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
~1,000 killed | 300-400 killed[3] | ||||||
~25,000[4]-40,000 civilians killed[a] ~15,000-17,000 civilians disappeared[5][7] ~100,000 civilians deported |
The Hama massacre[8] (Arabic: مجزرة حماة) occurred in February 1982 when the Syrian Arab Army and the Defense Companies, under orders of president Hafez al-Assad, besieged the town of Hama for 27 days in order to quell an uprising by the Muslim Brotherhood against the Ba'athist government.[9][5] The campaign that had begun in 1976 by Sunni Muslim groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood, was brutally crushed in an anti-Sunni massacre[10] at Hama, carried out by the Syrian Arab Army and Alawite militias under commanding General Rifaat al-Assad.[11]
Prior to the start of operations, Hafez al-Assad issued orders to seal off Hama from the outside world; effectively imposing a media blackout, total shut down of communications, electricity and food supplies to the city for months.[12] Initial diplomatic reports from Western countries stated that 1,000 were killed.[13][14] Subsequent estimates vary, with the lower estimates reporting at least 10,000 deaths,[15] while others put the number at 20,000 (Robert Fisk)[9] or 40,000 (Syrian Human Rights Committee and SNHR).[5][6][7] The massacre remains the "single deadliest act" of violence perpetrated by an Arab state upon its own population, in the history of Modern Middle East.[16][17]
Nearly two-thirds of the city was destroyed in the Ba'athist military operation.[15][18] Robert Fisk, who was present at Hama during the events of the massacre, reported that indiscriminate bombing had razed much of the city to the ground and that the vast majority of the victims were civilians.[19] Patrick Seale, reporting in The Globe and Mail, described the operation as a "two-week orgy of killing, destruction and looting" which destroyed the city and killed a minimum of 25,000 inhabitants.[4]
The attack has been described as a "genocidal massacre"[20] which was motivated by sectarian animosities against the Sunni community of Hama.[b] Memory of the massacre remains an important aspect of Syrian culture and evokes strong emotions amongst Syrians to the present day.[25][26]
In the wake of the tense period stretching from the Aleppo incident in 1979 to the Hama massacre in 1982, the regime accentuated the Alawitization of its coercive apparatus as its dependency on its sectarian base increased... regime violence against Sunnis did not begin in 2011, and was never restricted to the Muslim Brotherhood alone. Even Patrick Seale, who wrote an otherwise sympathetic biography of Hafez al-Asad, admits that thousands of Sunni civilians were slaughtered during the notorious Hama massacre in 1982 by the all-Alawi Defense Companies after the city fell. Human rights organizations have documented a series of other horrendous massacres of Sunnis that may not have reached Hama's level of violence, but were extremely bloody, nonetheless.
Tensions and political strife have been an on-going theme in Syria due in large part to the opposing ideologies of the regime's ruling Alawite minority -- Baathist socialism- and the Sunni Muslim majority, which makes up three quarters of the country's population, and largely favors adherence to Islamic law. After the Hama Massacre of 1982- a 'scorched earth' operation that killed 20,000 people to combat an attempted Sunni Muslim uprising- the government became increasingly authoritarian, relying on repressive policies to maintain control.
In Damascus there was a moment of something like panic when Hama rose. The regime itself shook... Behind the immediate contest lay the old multi-layered hostility between Islam and the Ba'th, between Sunni and 'Alawi, between town and country.
The most infamous crackdown, however, occurred in early 1982, when al-Assad ordered a brutal crackdown on the defiant city of Hama, where the Sunni Muslim community continued to defy the regime..
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