Syria, Always a Trigger Away from Hama Rules

In the annals of mass murder by a state, this one, in Syria, hardly registers in most memories, or even in the history books.

On June 27, 1980, some 80 members of Syria's internal "security" forces went to Palmyra Prison, where hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood members were being held. According to Amnesty International, the soldiers "were divided into groups of 10 and, once inside the prison, were ordered to kill the prisoners in their cells and dormitories. Some 600 to 1,000 prisoners are reported to have been killed. ... After the massacre, the bodies were removed and buried in a large common grave outside the prison."

The massacre was not yet the culmination of a broiling civil war between the Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni organization, and the minority regime of then-president Hafez el Assad, an Alawite (a secretive Islamic sect), whose flock accounts for less than 7 percent of Syria's population. The Brotherhood was attacking government and civilian targets almost weekly, if not daily, hoping to overthrow Assad. He retaliated. When the violence increased, he finally turned his military loose on Hama, Syria's fourth largest city and a Brotherhood stronghold, in a massive assault that began in early February 1982 and lasted several weeks, until many parts of the city were literally leveled and some 20,000 people were massacred.

Thomas Friedman, the current New York Times columnist, was the Beirut bureau chief at the time. He had a difficult enough time keeping up with the violence and routine massacres of the Lebanese civil war, which also featured the brutalities of the Syrian army, then occupying Lebanon for the third of what would be 29 years. He heard of the Hama massacre and went there to investigate.

Writing of Rifaat Assad, Hafez el-Assad's brother, who was in charge of the internal security forces that carried out the massacre, Friedman said Rifaat "understood that if the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood was allowed to seize control of even one neighborhood in Hama, then the Alawites' blood would be in the water and all their other opponents in Syria would be feeding on them within days. That is why Assad did not just quell the rebellion. He did not just arrest the rebels. He took revenge--all the way--and with twentieth-century weapons, that revenge was devastating enough to be felt in the gut of every Syrian."

Friedman continued:

A Lebanese businessman who is a partner in several deals with Rifaat Assad once told a friend of mine about a conversation he had had with the Syrian general about the Hama rebellion. "I guess you killed 7,000 people there," the businessman said to Rifaat. Normally a politician would play down such a ghastly incident and say, "Oh no, we didn't kill 7,000. What are you talking about? That's only propaganda from our enemies. We killed only a few hundred troublemakers." But Rifaat knew what he was doing in Hama and, according to my friend, said to this Lebanese businessman, "What are you talking about, 7,000? No, no. We killed 38,000."

Rifaat was apparently proud of the figure, said the Lebanese businessman. If anything, he wanted to inflate it. He understood that in a tribe-like environment such as Syria the game is either do it or it will be done to you, so he did it and he wanted all his enemies and friends to know that he did it. Rifaat understood that in a world of lone wolves it is much safer--as Machiavelli himself taught--to be feared than to be loved. Men grant and withdraw their love according to their whims, but fear is a hand that rests on their shoulders in a way they can never shake.

Friedman referred to the Hama massacre as Hama Rules.

Palmyra prison, also known as Tadmur prison, closed in 2001. Until then, the massacre that took place there before Hama was leveled, according to the Syrian Human Rights Committee, was "not the only one carried out by the Syrian regime in that dreadful prison. For two decades and until its official closure in early 2001, massacres continued harvesting thousands of human souls who were killed in mass execution campaigns. This is consistent with the statement made by the former Syrian Defence Minister Mustafa Talas to the German "Der Spiegel" Magazine, that he would weekly endorse the execution of almost 150 political Islamic detainees for many years. That is in addition to the daily bloodshed and murder that took place during torture."

The point of all this is that Hama Rules are still in effect in Syria. Hafez el-Assad died in 2000. But his son, Bahsra, is still an Assad. He doesn;t have the wiles, the intelligence or the brutality of his father: his 11-year reign is a see-saw of fits and starts, indecision and uncertainty, a reflection of a fundamental insecurity that nevertheless can be extremely dangerous, when the power behind that uncertainty is questioned, as it has been in the last few weeks. A version of Hama Rules was in play when Assad ordered his military and police to shoot unarmed civilians who were protesting in several cities. in recent days.

Something equally disturbing is in play when, as he did on March 30, the Syrian president delves into standard delusions about conspiracies and foreign interference to explain why Syria is no longer the vaunted police state of stability he was so proud of only a few weeks ago (as he described it in a Wall Street Journal interview). "There was," as The Times's Michael Slackman described the speech, "none of the somber tone that might be expected after government forces killed dozens in the past two weeks and demonstrators in several cities challenged the president's authority. Instead, the speech was a throwback to a vanishing era of leader worship, with audience members bounding from their seats to praise the president and crowds waving his picture."

That's dangerous, Stalinist stuff. That's the Assad reign, devolved to the lesser son. That's Hama Rules.

For more on Hama Rules, read the new FAQ: "What Are Hama Rules?"

See Also:

• Syrian President Bashar el Assad: Profile
• Preemption Jitters: Syria Talks Reforms
• What Is the Muslim Brotherhood?