PREVIEW： Realpolitik #18 ｜ The Syrian Civil War： Part I
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
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Summary
In this episode of RealPolitik, I do a deep dive on the importance of the city of Damascus, and why it is the keystone city in the Middle East and the seat of power for the Assad regime. I also talk about the geography of Syria, and the reasons why Damascus is so important.
Transcript
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Hello, and welcome to another episode of RealPolitik. I am your host, Firas Mardad.
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As has become usual now, I think, we are live. So if you have any questions, please put them
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into the chat and I will happily address them. Today, we're going to be talking about the roots
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of the Syrian civil war and be doing a little bit of a deep dive on that. To understand Syria,
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the first place to start in any geopolitical analysis is, well, the geography. And if you
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look at a map of Syria, this is one by Suryak, who is an excellent mapper on Twitter, on X.
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Where's his name? Oh, it doesn't appear here. But he's really, really good. And I love his maps,
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and I use them all the time. And I'm not getting paid to say this. But anyway, this is a good map
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of who's controlling which bits of Syria. And what I want to start with is the geography
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and the importance of Damascus. If you look at Syria and Lebanon and Israel, there is the West
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Lebanon mountain chain that starts somewhere around here in today's Turkey, in Iskanderun,
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goes all the way along the coast, hugging the coast into the country of Lebanon itself and ending
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somewhere near northern Israel. So that's the West Lebanon mountain chain. And then there's the East
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Lebanon mountain chain. It's considerably shorter and ends with the Galilee panhandle. And behind
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those two mountain chains is the city of Damascus. And Damascus is really important because it has an
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abundance of water, excellent agricultural land, at least before the population exploded. And it is
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the place that you want to place your military forces if you are to try to dominate Syria itself,
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as well as Lebanon, Jordan, and modern day Israel. So the importance of Syria really rests on the city
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of Damascus. It's protected by these mountain chains. It's protected by the Golan Heights.
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It's got an abundance of water. It's the desert is to its rear. And this is where you want to
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place your forces to dominate the whole Levant region. And really, it's the centerpiece of the
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whole of the whole geography of the Middle East. There isn't anywhere like it until you get to Baghdad,
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which is why historically, the two most important cities in the Levant have been Damascus, Baghdad,
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and to a lesser extent, Aleppo here in the north. And if you can dominate Damascus,
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and you are on technological parity with your enemies, you can dominate the whole region.
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The reason the Crusades failed, the main reason the Crusades failed, was because the Crusaders were
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too focused on getting from Antioch here to Jerusalem. And they took the coastal route,
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instead of taking the interior route and securing their flank properly,
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and hugging the river going from Aleppo, through Hama, through Homs, through Damascus itself.
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And if you control these four cities, and you have technological parity,
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if you control Aleppo, Hama, Homs, and Damascus,
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you pretty much dominate the eastern Mediterranean coast,
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because nobody can properly muster a force against you,
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especially if you have some naval assets to sort of fight along the coast as well.
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So holding Damascus is really key to holding the rest of the region.
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The fertility of the plains there, the availability of water,
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the fact that this is the oldest inhabited city in the world,
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all show you the importance of this strategic location.
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So that's what you want to think about first, when you think about Syria.
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If you dominate these four cities, you dominate all of Syria,
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And if you dominate Damascus, Israel is immediately placed at risk.
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And the reason the Crusades failed was because they couldn't take Damascus.
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And the most important city in the early Islamic empire was Damascus.
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So Islam started here, in Mecca and Medina and Saudi Arabia.
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But really, they became a major threat and a major problem once they took Damascus.
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And all of the fighting in the early Islamic history between the Sunnis and the Shia,
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a lot of it was focused on who is the ruler of Damascus,
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And he founded the Umayyad state, the first proper dynastic Islamic caliphate
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that went on to expand all the way from India to Spain.
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So Damascus really is sort of a keystone city in world geography.
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Ethnically and religiously, this country is a huge mosaic.
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This is a pretty good map that I found on Reddit.
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In the darker color, the darker yellow-brown, I want to call it, are the Kurds.
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And then the Alawites, who are a heretical extremist Shia sect,
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And then you have the Christians dispersed in red in a bunch of different places in Syria.
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Their numbers have reduced dramatically as a result of the civil war in Syria.
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So this is the geography and the ethnic composition of the country.
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And then in the 1960s, there was massive turmoil in the Middle East.
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This is something that I've addressed previously.
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Because it had been a generation since the end of the Ottoman Caliphate in 1923,
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which left the Muslim world without a center of gravity.
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And different ideologies tried to come in and say,
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to end the humiliation of the Arabs at the hands of Israel.
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a secular ideology, a secular nationalist ideology
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It only took hold properly in Syria and in Iraq.
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And promptly, because of the importance of Baghdad versus Damascus,
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And they had a bunch of conflicts between the mostly hidden conflicts
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over who gets to dominate the Arab world in the future.
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along with a map of all of the countries of the Arab League
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So this is what they this is what they believe in.
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and didn't want a religious ideology governing them
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meaning that the Sunni Muslims view them as heretics,
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the immediate reaction from the Muslim Brotherhood,
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And the reaction to that attack from the Muslim Brotherhood
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10,000 to 20,000 people were murdered in the city of Hama
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Syria rests on the control of this chain of cities,
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and the number of times that Damascus was captured,
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Therefore, they don't depend so much on the coast.