Read Inside Syria: The Backstory of Their Civil War and What the World Can Expect for Free Online

replaced the previous treaty and established most of the borders of modern Turkey. Turkey officially gave up territorial claims to the Arab Middle East, which, in any case, had already been seized by Britain and France. Hatay Province remained part of the French mandate of Syria and Lebanon. In 1938, residents of Hatay separated from Syria and then joined Turkey in 1939. Hatay has long-standing cultural, linguistic, and economic ties to Syria. So the split-off was controversial.
    â€œHatay was stolen by the Turks,” Mudar Barakat told me in a Damascus interview. 16 As an economist and a government advisor, he reflects the common view among Syrians on this issue. “The Turks disenfranchised the Christians and Alawites and replaced them with people from Turkey.”
    Succeeding Syrian governments have claimed Hatay as part of Syria.Official Syrian maps don't recognize the de facto border. The border dispute remains an irritant between modern-day Turkey and Syria.
    During all these conferences and treaty signings, the colonial powers never allowed local people to decide their own fate. The results became strikingly clear when the French tried to govern Syria and Lebanon.
    Soon after marching their troops into Damascus, the French faced the problem of how to keep themselves in power. General Gouraud's secretary, Robert de Caix, wrote that France had two choices. It could “build a Syrian nation [state] which does not yet exist.” Or it could “cultivate and maintain all the phenomena…that these divisions give. I must say that only the second option interests me.” 17 In short, the French chose to divide and rule.
    French officials carved up the old Ottoman territory with the aim of exacerbating ethnic and religious tensions. France demarcated separate administrative regions named State of Greater Lebanon, Aleppo, Damascus, State of the Alawites, and State of the Druze. Greater Lebanon included many Maronite Christians, whom the French favored. The French discriminated against the Muslims, Alawites, and Druze, thus maintaining a cheap labor force while sowing religious division.
    Syrians were never happy with the new colonial occupiers. France boasted of bringing civilization to Syria in the form of new railroad lines and roads. But peasant farmers were forced to build the roads for no pay. 18 The French administrators were notoriously corrupt, expecting bribes to carry out even minor government tasks.
    A new group of nationalists emerged in Syria during and after World War I. They didn't come from the traditional wealthy clans like King Faisal and his brothers. They arose from among the petit bourgeoisie, the merchants, the well-to-do farmers, and the Arabs who served in the Turkish Army. The man who would become known as Sultan Pasha al-Atrash was one such army veteran.
    Sultan al-Atrash cut a dashing figure sitting astride a white stallion.He wore a traditional robe and a tightly wound keffiyeh, and he sported a large, tapered mustache favored by Arab sheiks and Ottoman bureaucrats. In a photo, Atrash stood in front of his rebel army with banners and flags raised high. In 1925 he became one of the top leaders of a massive Syrian revolt against French rule.
    Atrash was born in 1891, the son of a local sheik, or village headman, and grew up in a rural Druze community. He was conscripted into the Ottoman army at the age of twenty, where he learned to read and write. The army, and its military academies in particular, offered opportunities for village Arabs to gain a formal education. Some Arab officers were exposed to the nationalist thinking being spread by fellow students at the academies. One day, Atrash came home to find that Turks had hung his father and four other sheiks for antigovernment activities. Atrash became a committed revolutionist.
    Atrash fought alongside T. E. Lawrence and Auda abu Tayi during the World War I Arab revolt. He helped liberate Damascus from the Turks in 1918. In