As the Syrian army fell like a house of cards in the face of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, and on the eve of the Israeli attack that destroyed this army’s military infrastructure with the press of a button, the rejectionist camp in Lebanon continued to call for a "strong" army in Lebanon(!) and to insist that only once such an army is built can Hezbollah be disarmed.
Regardless of the fact that they do not mean what they are saying, the recent developments in Syria have brought this matter - along with questions regarding the armies of our region, and behind them, the concept of strength as such - back to the fore. Our countries may need armies, but "strong" armies are certainly the last thing they need.
It hurt to watch the Israelis do what they did to Syria, showing no interest in the conditions that could emerge from Assad's collapse. Pure selfishness drives the behavior of the Jewish state, especially since the catastrophic Al-Aqsa Flood attacks. Israel has made its absolute security its only concern - neither political shifts, nor appeals by global powers, nor pressures of any kind do anything to temper this pursuit. Since the newly emerging situation in Syria remains obscure, we saw it take the initiative and seize its opportunity.
However, the Syrian army’s history mitigates grievances against Israel's actions, especially since the losses this army incurred include chemical weapons that had been used to burn the people of Ghouta in the past. More than any other, Syria’s army has always been associated with military coups. Syrian putschists gifted its people leaders like Husni al-Zaim, Adib Shishakli, and Abdul Hamid al-Sarraj, and that was before military officers endeavored to dissolve their country in what became known as the "United Arab Republic."
Its most poisonous gift, however, was Hafez al-Assad. Syria’s Minister of Defense during the 1967 war in which Israel occupied the Golan Heights, was the one who was named officially the "Hero of the Golan" before he was ultimately anointed the "Hero of (the war of) October."
The military establishment, then, was a factory for an alliance between oppression and lies. Since its first coup in 1949, Syria has suffered two major defeats, in 1967 and 1973, and its 1974 "Agreement on Disengagement" failed to avert the crushing humiliation it was subjected to in Lebanon in 1982. Despite soliciting the help of Iranian, Russian and Hezbollah forces to prop up the regime later on, Damascus broadly turned a blind eye to Israel's violations of its sovereignty from the air and the ground, and after October 7, the officers became silent as a graveyard.
As the overwhelming majority of Syrians fell beneath the poverty line, the army remained a burden on an economy that contracted and declined and grew only increasingly reliant on the production of captagon. Added to the military were local militias that were granted more and more autonomy, enabling them to plunder the modest resources of the areas that they had imposed their control over and to line their pockets as they became adept smugglers and kidnappers.
Nonetheless, the Syrian army was indeed "valiant" in its prisons and torture chambers, its use of cluster bombs and chemical weapons, and its raids on cities, first during the revolution and then over the course of the civil war.
For its part, Iraq’s modern history also offers another verdict on the Levant’s experiences with "strong" armies. Traditionally, the state narrative’s founding myth around this army has traced its roots back to the movement of Rashid Ali al-Gaylani, whose coup was supported by Nazi Germany in 1941. Between 1958, when the military took power, and 1979, the year Saddam Hussein monopolized control, Iraq witnessed four successful coups and too many failed attempts to count.
However, the first military regime's (led by Abdul Karim Qasim) first military campaign was launched against the Iraqi Kurds in the north, and this mission continued to escalate under the Baathists, culminating in the atrocities of Anfal and Halabja. In the meantime, Saddam dragged his army into a destructive war with Iran that went on for nearly a decade and claimed one million souls. Hardly had that war ended when Saddam's army invaded Kuwait. After a broad international coalition liberated Kuwait, his defeated military crushed an uprising in the south and tried to crush another in the north.
Nevertheless, when Saddam fell and his opponents and the Americans nonchalantly and extemporaneously proposed dissolving his army, many raised their voices in protest under the pretext of the need to fight Israel. They argued that dissolving the army would be nothing more than a favor to the Jewish state, which they claimed had been fearful of this army.
This institution was indeed preserved, but it collapsed soon after, in 2014 in Mosul, not in the face of Israel but in the face of ISIS. In turn, the shortcomings of this episode were addressed through militias, leading to the emergence of the Popular Mobilization Forces, an umbrella under which militias carried out what Baghdad and Tehran saw as strategic roles that the army could not be trusted with.
Over the course of the journey, we had the opportunity, in 1973, to witness a moment of joint Arab "nationalist" action between the two major Levantine armies when Baghdad sent forces to Damascus during the October War. At the time, the Syrian leadership claimed that the Iraqis had come for no other reason than to carry out a coup, while Iraq’s leaders believed that the Syrians concocted this accusation to restrict their freedom of movement and prevent them from fighting Israel.
In truth, when it comes to Israel, it would be best to remove armies and resistance militias from our programs for the conflict, and to think of means and tools that do not involve the use of force, which some in Lebanon continue to insist is the only language the Jewish state understands.
