Hama Massacre - Background

Background

Main article: Islamic uprising in Syria See also: History of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria

The Ba'ath Party of Syria, which advocated the ideologies of Arab nationalism, Arab socialism, and Shia Islamism had clashed with the Muslim Brotherhood, a group with a conservative ideology, since 1940. The two groups were opposed in important ways. The Ba'ath party was secular, nationalist and led by the minority Alawites, which conservative Sunni Muslims considered heretics. The Muslim Brotherhood, like other Islamist groups, saw nationalism as un-Islamic and religion as inseparable from politics and government. Most Ba'ath party members were from humble, obscure backgrounds and favored radical economic policies, while Sunni Muslims had dominated the souqs and landed power of Syria, and tended to view government intervention in the economy as threatening. Not all Sunni notables believed in fundamentalism, and those who did not often saw the Brotherhood as a useful tool against the Ba'ath.

The town of Hama in particular was a "stronghold of landed conservatism and of the Muslim Brothers," and "had long been a redoubtable opponent of the Ba'athist state." The first full-scale clash between the two occurred shortly after the 1963 coup, in which the Ba'ath party first gained power in Syria. In April 1964 riots broke out in Hama, where Muslim insurgents put up "roadblocks, stockpiled food and weapons, ransacked wine shops." After an Ismaili Ba'ath militia man was killed, riots intensified and rebels attacked "every vestige" of the Ba'ath party in Hama. Tanks were brought in to crush the rebellion and 70 members of the Muslim Brotherhood died, with many others wounded or captured, and still more disappearing underground.

After the clashes in Hama, the situation periodically erupted into clashes between the government and various Islamic sections. However a more serious challenge occurred after the Syrian invasion of Lebanon in 1976. From 1976 to 1982, Sunni Islamists fought the Ba'ath Party-controlled government of Syria in what has been called a "long campaign of terror". In 1979 the Brotherhood undertook guerrilla activities in multiple cities within the country targeting military officers and government officials. The resulting government repression included abusive tactics, torture, mass arrests, and a number of massacres. In July 1980, the ratification of Law No. 49 made membership in the Muslim Brotherhood a capital offense.

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 26 June 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 (reports more than 1200) were executed in their cells in Tadmor Prison (near Palmyra), by units loyal to the president's brother Rifaat al-Assad.