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I'm informing meself a little of Syrian history to get some context on Syria's place in the world and it's internal politics. I didn't know she had "personal union" with Egypt for three years when the two countries formed a common republic and Nasser was the president. I'm using the Contemporary Archive of the Islamic World, Volume 1, Syria 1975/76-2018 (Edited by Anthony Axon and Susan Hewitt, Brill, 2019), just running through the timeline for now. I wonder why the book starts at 1975/76. Hafez al-Assad came to power five years earlier, and the ruling Ba'ath Party seized control in '63. Was their occupation of Lebanon so important? Maybe the reason for the starting date is in the Preface or something. So basically Syria became independent in 1945-46, since then it had several conflicts with Israel, as a member of the Arab League, along Egypt, on the apropos of the Golan Heights, and in Lebanon. Also a usual opponent of Iraq and a natural ally of Iran. The timeline doesn't mentions Turkey only for her role she played by allowing the formation of an Syrian opposition faction in Istanbul. Since 2002 Syria is massaged by the US, accusing her with supporting terrorists and acquiring weapons of mass destruction. I really have to squint into the book to tell something about the internal affairs. It looks like they have a de facto one party system with the Socialist Ba'ath Party controlling the politics, they helped Bashar, the son of Hafez into power too. Apparently a quite large number of residents doesn't/didn't have citizenship, Kurds, who form about 15% of the population got citizenship only recently. Some religious softening is also going on, niqab was banned, in favor of hijab. During the Arab Spring the same went down as in Lybia: while civilian unrest was going on (I assume also fueled by foreign powers), and troops switched sides to help rebels, foreign powers demanded Assad to be more lenient toward them and stop suppressing them, stop fighting. Assad did better than Gaddafi. Also Hafez al-Assad had big heda.