Background and causes of the Syrian revolution

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This article discusses the background and reasons that contributed to the outbreak of the Syrian revolution. What began as large-scale peaceful protests in March 2011 as part of the 2010–11 Arab Spring protests that reverberated across the Arab World, eventually escalated into a civil war following the brutal crackdown by Assad regime's security apparatus.

The Ba'athist government in Syria was constructed by General Hafez al-Assad, who came to power through a coup in 1970 and purged the Arab Socialist Ba'ath party of rivals led by Salah Jadid. The regime structure consisted of three parts: a powerful Ba'ath party organization which has extensive control over the Syrian society, a formidable security apparatus - consisting of secret police, Ba'athist paramilitaries and Syrian military establishment - glued to the party's Central Command, in addition to upper-class Alawite elites who are loyal to the Assad dynasty. Hafez al-Assad's dictatorship lasted for three decades; characterized by extensive socio-political repression, censorship, human rights abuses, and systematic mass violence unleashed on civilian populations through brutal tactics such as massacres, forced disappearances and torture. After Hafez al-Assad's death in 2000, his son Bashar al-Assad became the President and inherited the totalitarian system of Ba'athist Syria.^[1]

While Bashar al-Assad continued to strongly espouse the socialist doctrines of Ba'athism; he started to gear Syria towards a socialist market economy by loosening Ba'ath party's grip on the economy and opening up private sectors. Syrian economy was largely supported by oil exports, which enabled to fund various industries, including agriculture, manufacturing, and tourism. At the onset of the Arab Spring protests and eruption of Syrian revolution in 2011, Syria's economic situation was considered dire, with rising inflation, high unemployment rates, corruption and the socio-political atmosphere was characterized by heavy repression. These were a direct consequence of economic liberalization of 2000s; which skyrocketed socio-economic inequalities, increased corruption and cronyism of party oligarchs; thereby drastically alienating the middle and working classes. New monopolies in agrarian sector acquired by pro-government oligarchs and government's mismanagement of the droughts of 2006-11 worsened the living conditions of the peasants, causing widespread disenchantment and exacerbation of rural-urbal divisions.^[1]