The spectre of fundamentalism rises over Syria

The Assad family held together Syria’s disparate communities with a secular government. That body politic will fray. India needs to keep an eye on the possibility of growing radicalisation
Image used for representational purposes only.
Image used for representational purposes only.Express Illustrations | Sourav Roy
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On my first visit to Syria, which was being torn apart by the Arab Spring, the most startling experience outside the Umayyad mosque in Damascus was a gaggle of about 100 women speaking Urdu and Hindi. These women—from Uttar Pradesh, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh—had defied the Indian government’s ban on travel to Syria because it had become one of the most dangerous places in the world, and were visiting places of pilgrimage in the Levant.

At the mosque, the women from Lucknow and Hyderabad had queued up to reverentially press their heads against the shrine of John the Baptist. It contains the relics of Saint John, who is believed by Christians to have baptised Jesus Christ in the Jordan river. The Indian pilgrims did not refer to him, though, as John the Baptist. For them, according to Islamic belief, he was Imam Yahya. They had been told that if they pressed their heads against this shrine, they would be blessed with prophetic visions. 

Religion and society in Syria, secular in its complexities for centuries, is now certain to fray. The recent experience in Syria’s neighbourhood following upheavals similar to the one which saw the collapse of the Assad family rule last weekend does not offer hope. 

Will the relics of the baptiser of Jesus Christ, to which Pope John Paul II prayed in 2001, survive last weekend’s regime change in Syria? President Hafez al Assad and his successor-son Bashar carefully maintained a separation of religion from state, which may now be ending.

In all of Syria, the only place where the Star of David is on display is at the Umayyad mosque. The Ba’ath ruling party since 1963 banned the symbol of Judaism, which is also on Israel’s flag. Will the only symbol of Jewish identity in Syria now be allowed to remain in place? Or will its fate be the same as the Buddha statues of Bamiyan in Taliban’s hands?

The deposed Ba’ath government’s ministry of tourism told me that an average of 38,000 religious pilgrims from India have been visiting Syria annually since the Russians helped quell the rebellion against Assad’s rule in 2015. The Indian government does not have reliable figures because many Lucknowis and Hyderabadis legally go to Karbala and Najaf in Iraq, revered by Shias the world over. Then they slip into Syria through the 600-km border. Despite the chaos of the Arab Spring, Assad’s government liberalised entry along its borders for Indian passport-holders on religious pilgrimage and waived visa fees.

The rationale was that Arabs entering Syria may have political and ideological agendas. Indian Shias, on the other hand, were sympathetic to the Alawite—essentially Shia—Assad government and were going to Syria solely on pilgrimage, not to overthrow the government.

Last week, the ministry of external affairs told “Indian nationals to avoid all travel to Syria, until further notification. Those who can, are advised to leave (Syria) by the earliest available commercial flights”. Going by past experience, pilgrims from India are unlikely to heed such advisories from the ministry, in part because they know that they will be evacuated by authorities in New Delhi owing to domestic political compulsions if there is any major crisis.

The fall of the secular Assad regime is, however, an additional headache for Indian intelligence agencies. They will now have to guard against the possibility of radicalisation of pilgrims by the incoming regime, which has a high Islamist component. Turkey’s newly gained influence in Damascus and Ankara’s Pakistani connections imply that New Delhi cannot afford to be sanguine. 

The devastating Lebanese civil war, which began in 1975, forced the renowned Middle East Centre for Arab Studies (MECAS) to close three years into the strife. India’s diplomats who wanted to be Arabists were once trained there. Britain’s best Arabists were also trained there since the Second World War. Since the closure of MECAS, India began dispersing its probationer-diplomats who were allotted Arabic language training to Damascus, Tunis, Rabat and even to Kuwait. The American University in Cairo remained popular in the Indian Foreign Service. Among all these cities, the deepest bonds by young IFS officers with the Arab world were forged by those who went to university in Damascus.

One such very capable officer stayed in Damascus continuously for an unprecedented six years and became deputy chief of mission. He then asked to be posted to Palestine as India’s representative. But the MEA decided that his services could be better used in Berlin. 

A P Venkateswaran, who became India’s 14th foreign secretary, was ambassador to Syria from 1975 to 1977. During these two years, Indira Gandhi sent Venkateswaran several times to Baghdad as the prime minister’s ‘special envoy’. Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein was her best friend in the Arab world and an important leader of the Non-aligned Movement. Venkateswaran told me that not once during those visits to Baghdad did he shake Hussein’s hand. “I knew even then that Saddam’s hands were dripping with blood. Being an Indian gives you the luxury of saying namaste with folded hands.”

How the destinies of Arab countries have changed! Today, much of the world is seeing blood dripping from Bashar al Assad’s hands.

There was general astonishment this week that the Assad presidency was overthrown peacefully and the transition has so far been without bloodshed. The world has forgotten that when Hafez al Assad took power on November 12, 1970, it was a similarly peaceful transition. The world did not even know that Syria had a new government until it published a decree four days later.

Historians will spend the coming years exploring the secrets of 54 years of Assad family rule. There will be tomes like the ones that came out after the US toppled Iraq’s Ba’athist regime. One subject of much curiosity for historians will be Asma, Syria’s first lady for almost a quarter century. Educated at King’s College in London and widely speculated to be a dual Syrian and British citizen, Vogue once carried a cover story on Asma Assad titled ‘Desert Rose’. It was deleted from the magazine’s website after her husband was derided as a tyrant when he ruthlessly crushed the Arab Spring in Syria.

(Views are personal)

K P Nayar

Strategic analyst (kpnayar@gmail.com)

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