Hama massacre

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Hama massacre
Location	Hama, Syria
Date	February 2, 1982
Attack type	Scorched Earth
Death(s)	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 Muslim Brotherhood. An estimated 7,000 to 40,000 people were killed, including about 1,000 soldiers, ^[1] and large parts of the old city were destroyed.

Contents 1 Background 2 The massacre 3 Fatality estimates 4 After the massacre 5 See also 6 References 7 Bibliography

[edit] Background

Syria had been deeply involved in Lebanon's Civil War since 1976. 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, Christians, and infrastructure. The resulting government repression included abusive tactics, torture, mass arrests, and a number of massacres, and was largely directed at the main body of the Muslim Brotherhood. Anti-regime violence included the killing 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 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 high numbers of deaths and shortages of food and water from fleeing civilians and from soldiers.^[2]

According to Amnesty International, the Syrian military bombed the old city center from the air to facilitate the entry of infantry and tanks through the narrow streets; buildings were demolished by tanks during the first four days of fighting. Large parts of the old city were destroyed. There are also unsubstantiated reports of use of hydrogen cyanide by the government forces.^[1] After encountering fierce resistance, Rifaat's forces ringed the city with artillery and shelled it for three weeks. The Syrian army assaulted the town of 350,000 people on February 2 with extensive shelling.

Afterwards, military and internal security personnel were dispatched to comb through the rubble for surviving Brothers and their sympathizers.^[3] Torture and mass executions of suspected rebel sympathizers ensued, killing many thousands over several weeks.

[edit] Fatality estimates

Estimates of casualties vary from an estimated 7,000 to 35,000 people killed, including about 1,000 soldiers^[1]; Robert Fisk, who was in Hama shortly after the massacre, estimated fatalities as high as 10,000,^[4] whereas The New York Times estimates death toll as up to 20,000.^[5] According to Thomas Friedman^[6], Rifaat later boasted of killing 38,000 people. The Syrian Human Rights Committee estimates 30,000 to 40,000 people were killed.

[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 the US, 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 government, before rejoining the London-based mainstream.

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. When the massacre is publicly referenced, it is 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.^[7]

[edit] See also

• Black September in Jordan
• Counter-insurgency

[edit] References

[edit] Bibliography

• Robert Fisk (1990) Pity the Nation, London: Touchstone, ISBN 0-671-74770-3— pp. 181-87
• Thomas Friedman (1998) From Beirut to Jerusalem, London: HarperCollins Publishers, ISBN 0-00-653070-2— includes a chapter on the Hama Massacre; "Hama Rules"
• Kathrin Nina Wiedl: The Hama Massacre - reasons, supporters of the rebellion, consequences. München 2007, ISBN 978-3638710343.
• The Economist (November 16, 2000) Is Syria really changing?, London: 'Syria’s Islamist movement has recently shown signs of coming back to life, nearly 20 years after 30,000 people were brutally massacred in Hama in 1982' The Economist
• Routledge (January 10, 2000) Summary of the January 10, 2002, Roundtable on Militant Islamic Fundamentalism in the Twenty-First Century, Volume 24, Number 3 / June 1, 2002: Pages:187 - 205
• Jack Donnelly (1988) Human Rights at the United Nations 1955-85: The Question of Bias, International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 3 (Sep., 1988), pp. 275-303