Hama massacre

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Hama massacre
Location Hama, Syria
Date 2 February 1982
Attack type Scorched Earth
Deaths 7,000 to 40,000

The Hama massacre (Arabic: مجزرة حماة‎) occurred on February 2, 1982, when the Syrian army bombarded the town of Hama in order to quell a revolt by the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood. An estimated 7,000 to 40,000 people were killed, including about 1,000 soldiers. [1] [2]

Contents

[edit] Background

Syria had been deeply involved in Lebanon's Civil War since 1976. Disputes also arose with Turkey which accused Syria of supporting and training the Kurdish PKK, and Turkey mobilized troops on its borders with Syria to deal with Kurdish rebels . A Jihadist splinter group from the Muslim Brotherhood took advantage of this situation to start an armed rebellion against the government of Hafez al-Assad. The Muslim Brotherhood opposed Assad on political as well as theological grounds; Assad was an Alawite, regarded as heretical by the hardline Sunni Islamists.

The Brotherhood undertook guerrilla activities in multiple cities within the country targeting military officers, government officials, and infrastructure. The resulting government repression included abusive tactics, torture, mass arrests, and a number of massacres, was largely directed at the main body of the Muslim Brotherhood. Anti-regime violence included the killings of eighty-three mainly Alawite military cadets at an artillery school in Aleppo in June 1979, and three car bomb attacks in Damascus between August and November 1980 that killed several hundred people. In July 1980, membership in the Muslim Brotherhood was made a capital offense, with the ratification of Law No. 49. Throughout the first years of the 1980s the Muslim Brotherhood and various other Islamist factions staged hit-and-run and bomb attacks against the government and its officials, including a nearly successful attempt to assassinate president Hafez al-Assad on June 26, 1980, during an official state reception for the president of Mali. When a machine-gun salvo missed him, al-Assad allegedly ran to kick a hand grenade aside, and his bodyguard (who survived and was later promoted to a much higher position) smothered the explosion of another one. Surviving with only light injuries, al-Assad's revenge was swift and merciless: only hours later a large number of imprisoned Islamists (most reports ranged from several hundred to approximately 1000) were murdered in their cells in Tadmor Prison (near Palmyra), by units loyal to the president's brother Rifaat al-Assad.

[edit] The Massacre

Calls for vengeance grew within the brotherhood, and bomb attacks increased in frequency. Events culminated with a general insurrection in the conservative Sunni town of Hama in February 1982. Islamists and other opposition activists proclaimed Hama a "liberated city" and urged Syrians to rise up against the "infidel". Brotherhood fighters swept the city of Ba'athists, breaking into the homes of government employees and suspected supporters of the regime, killing about 50.

The army was mobilized, and Hafez sent Rifaat's special forces and Mukhabarat agents to the city. Before the attack, the Syrian government called for the city's surrender and warned that anyone remaining in the city would be considered as a rebel. Robert Fisk in his book Pity the Nation described how civilians were fleeing Hama while tanks and troops were moving towards the city's outskirts to start the siege. He cites reports of mass death and shortages of food and water from fleeing civilians and from soldiers .[3]

According to Amnesty International, the Syrian military bombed the old streets of the city from the air to facilitate the introduction of military forces and tanks through the narrow streets, where homes were crushed by tanks during the first four days of fighting. They also claim that the Syrian military pumped poison gas into buildings where insurgents were said to be hiding. After encountering fierce resistance, Rifaat's forces ringed the city with artillery and shelled it for three weeks. The Syrian army assaulted the town on February 2 with extensive shelling of the town of 350 000 inhabitants.

Afterward, military and internal security personnel were dispatched to comb through the rubble for surviving Brothers and their sympathizers.[4] Then followed several weeks of torture and mass executions of suspected rebel sympathizers, killing many thousands, known as the Hama Massacre. Estimates of casualties vary from an estimated 7000 to 35,000 people killed, including about 1000 soldiers. [5] Robert Fisk, who was in Hama shortly after the massacre, estimated fatalities as high as 10,000.[6] The New York Times estimated the death toll as up to 20,000.[2] According to Thomas Friedman[7] Rifaat later boasted of killing 38,000 people. The Syrian Human Rights Committee estimates 30,000 to 40,000 were killed. Most of the old city was completely destroyed, including its palaces, mosques, ancient ruins and the famous Azem Palace mansion.

[edit] After the Massacre

After the Hama uprising, the Islamist insurrection was broken, and the Brotherhood has since operated in exile while other factions surrendered or slipped into hiding. Government attitudes in Syria hardened considerably during the uprising, and Assad would rely more on repressive than on political tactics for the remainder of his rule, although a partial re-liberalization began again in the 1990s.

After the massacre, the already evident disarray in the insurgents' ranks increased, and the rebel factions experienced acrimonious internal splits. Particularly damaging to their cause was the deterrent effect of the massacre, as well as the realization that no Sunni uprisings had occurred in the rest of the country in support of the Hama rebels. Most members of the rebel groups fled the country or remained in exile, mainly in Jordan and Iraq, while others would make their way to U.S, the United Kingdom and Germany. The Islamist groups either made peace with the regime or melted away, while the Muslim Brotherhood -- the largest such group -- split into two factions, after giving up on armed struggle. One, more moderate and recognized by the international Muslim Brotherhood, eventually headquartered itself in the UK where it remains, while another for several years retained a military structure in Iraq, with backing from the Saddam government, before rejoining the London-based mainstream.

Thomas Friedman points out that never again have Muslim extremists threatened the Syrian government. Some argue that the event is considered as one of the few occasions after the end of World War II when an insurgency has been successfully dealt with by using military force.[8]

Western countries denounced the attack as a breach of human rights and a massacre, and the Hama massacre is often raised in indictment of the Assad regime's poor human rights record. Within Syria, mention of the massacre has been strictly suppressed, although the general contours of the events -- and various partisan versions, on all sides -- are well-known throughout the country. In case the massacre is publicly referenced, it will be only as the "events" or "incident" at Hama.

President Bashar al Assad claimed the United States could benefit from the Syrian tactics used in the Hama massacre to fight terrorism.[9]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/syria/hama.htm
  2. ^ http://www.123exp-history.com/t/03764221827/
  3. ^ Pity the Nation, pages 185-86
  4. ^ (The Age of Sacred Terror by Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, Random House, c2002, p.86
  5. ^ http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/syria/hama.htm
  6. ^ Pity the Nation, pages 186
  7. ^ From Beirut to Jerusalem, pages 76-105
  8. ^ The Economist article After smart weapons, smart soldiers (October 25th 2007) [1]
  9. ^ Bashar al Assad claims united states could benefit from Syrian counterterrorist tactics

[edit] Bibliography

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