Great Syrian Revolt - The Course of The War

The Course of The War

Initially, the French were ill-equipped to respond to the outbreak of violence. In 1925, the amount of French troops in the Mandate of Syria was at its lowest ever, numbering only 14,397 men and officers, with an additional 5,902 Syrian auxiliaries, down from 70,000 in 1920. In 1924, the French representative reporting to the Permanent Mandates Commission in 1924 wrote that “the little state of Djebel-Druze of small importance and only about 50,000 inhabitants.” Consequently, the Druze, when they revolted in September 1925 met with great success, and after a series of victories, including the annihilation of a French relief column, captured the fort at al-Suwayda.

Instead of engaging the Druze in the winter, the French decided to temporarily withdraw, a decision noted by the new high commissioner, Henry de Jouvenel, to be a tactical error, as it underrepresented French military strength and encouraged a regional rebellion to achieve national dimensions. Indeed, the weak immediate response of the French invited the intervention of disaffected local elite, tribesmen, and loosely-connected nationalists based in Damascus.

First to seize upon the opportunity presented by the revolt were the nomadic tribes, which used the absence of French authority – troops had been drawn away to concentrate on the rebelling region – to prey upon farmers and merchants, thereby creating an atmosphere of sympathy for the rebellious Druze.

The nationalists seized upon the Druze revolt in relatively short order, forging an alliance with Sultan al-Atrash within six weeks of the uprising’s commencement, and establishing a National Provisional Government in Jabal-Druze with al-Atrash as President and Dr. Abd al-Rahman Shahbandar, leader of the People’s Party, as Vice President.

In response to the outbreak of violence, Jouvenal declared free and popular elections for every area that had not been affected by the rebellion in the beginning of 1926. Most elections were held peacefully. However, in two cities, Homs and Hama, the local elites refused to allow elections to be held. This was followed in September 1926 by a full-fledged insurrection. French forces rushed to put down the new threat, which gave the rebellion added life elsewhere. At the time, the lack of troops meant that for the French to focus on Homs and Hama, they had to neglect other regions, allowing the revolt to spread. Within two months the Homs-Hama region fell, but the conflict there bought rebels elsewhere much-needed breathing room, and taught the rebels in Damascus a valuable lesson about troop placement.

Despite the revolts in Homs and Hama, the turn-out for the elections suggested to the French that the Syrian people had a desire for peace; in the rural areas around Homs and Hama, where no violence was reported, voter turn-out was 95%. Further, it revealed that the many of the belligerents were local elites, and when full amnesty was again offered in February 1926, the entire country, with the exception of Jebal-Druze and Damascus, was pacified.

The lessons the rebels learned from Homs and Hama were many, and were what sustained the rebellion for a further year and a half. Homs and Hama were lost because the rebels concentrated their forces in the face of overwhelming French firepower, because they fortified their position and waited for the French to arrive, and because they made no attempt to sever French lines of communication. In Damascus, the rebels were dispersed, so that no random artillery fire would defeat them. Further, when the Druze attacked Damascus, they did so from multiple directions. Both groups repeatedly cut French lines of communication, and while the French suffered few difficulties in restoring them, the psychological effect the destruction had on them was significant.

Despite the breadth of the rebellion and the initial rebel successes, the dedication of the French made its defeat inevitable. By early 1926, they had increased their troop numbers to 50,000, roughly the size of the total Druze population. By the spring, much of Damascus had been destroyed by artillery fire, and the nationalist leadership had been forced into exile. In the spring of the following year, the Druze were decisively defeated, and Sultan al-Atrash went into exile in Transjordan to escape the death penalty.