Sectarianism Between Colonialism and Anti-Colonialism

Asharq Al-Awsat

27-03-2025

During and after the crimes on the Syrian coast, two voices were raised. One was the voice of the people (yes, the people- without quotation marks), and it broke into several sharp sectarian voices, each defaming the other. The second, the voice that concerns us here, was that of the elite, some of whom directed their ire at colonialism and accused it of manufacturing sectarianism.
Colonialism, of course, was not innocent, and defending the roles it played is not the goal here. However, this approach is dangerous because it exploits suffering for collective exoneration, to clean our image and thus absolve ourselves of any responsibility.
During the brief Mandate period, colonialism only took sectarianism as its criterion insofar as it intersected or went against the mandate authorities' plans for the countries they had been taken over and were being "prepared" for politics. While the Maronites, at the time, were more keen on turning Lebanon into a nation-state than any of the country's other sects, this role was mirrored by the Sunnis of Iraq, who, unlike the Shiites, did not take part in the 1920 Iraq Revolt or share the Arab nationalist aspirations of the Sunni elites in Syria. Moreover, despite the massive mistakes the Americans made in Iraq after 2003, they largely stuck to the same principle the British had followed eighty years earlier. The posture taken by Iraqi Shiites, who seceded from Saddam Hussein's regime and accepted federalism and parliamentary democracy, corresponded to that which Iraq's Sunnis had taken when they distanced themselves from the 1920 Revolt. In the meantime, the Levant encountered a broad range of colonial phenomena and approaches, but very few have taken any time to unpack these nuances. The decision to appoint Faisal I king in Iraq took into consideration that fact that he was a Sunni and at the same time accepted by the Shiites because of his belonging to 'Ahl al-Bayt,' (the Prophet's family). Driven by boorish radicalism, Maurice-Paul Sarrail, the French High Commissioner for Syria and Lebanon in 1924–25 who became known as the butcher of Damascus and Jabal al-Druze, sought to impose secularism, infuriating Lebanon's sects and religious communities, its Christians even more than its Muslims.
Moreover, many of the actions and developments that are commonly vilified deserve more balanced and fair assessments. One example is the French authorities' introduction of a federal model early on in Syria, for which they were accused of 'splitting' Syria; mind you, the latter's modern history has not brought anything better- perhaps with the exception of the brief 'separatist' period from 1961 to 1963.
In the same vein, condemnations of Western guarantees and protections, and the paths they paved into the heart of our countries, were not accompanied by serious condemnation of the reasons that drove people to seek and celebrate those guarantees and protections. Instead, these communities were simply dismissed as 'collaborators,' and no attempt was made to understand the mysterious reasons that drove them to this 'collaboration.' As for the modern state brought by the mandates' interfered with the dynamics of sectarian relations, unlike the Ottomans who never interfered in these matters, it did not deserve to be seen as an opportunity to move beyond sectarianism.
Since prevailing political interpretations tend to draw an equivalence between sectarianism and colonialism, they keenly avoid mention of the sectarianism that came from national liberation movements and military coups. With regard to the instruments of power, for example, Gamal Abdel Nasser managed to not include a single Coptic Egyptian among the 'Free Officers' he had brought together to overthrow King Farouk and produce the commanders and cadres of the new regime. Similarly, it is difficult to deny that a crucial driving force of the sectarian fanaticism born of Baathist rule in Syria and Iraq, was the closed nature of the regimes, as well as their security apparatuses' tight grip over society, which was coupled with a form of 'nationalist' repression that sought to suppress all communal or subnational identities. The crude sectarian overtones of Saddam Hussein's subsequent execution were attributed to the habits of Bostonians or machinations in Los Angeles! That was before Iraq's civil war in 2006- a war fought 'among brothers,' of course.
If one must study Germany to understand nationalism and France to understand revolutions, one must study Lebanon to understand sectarianism. Not because Lebanon is more sectarian than other countries, but because it is more openly sectarian, which has prevented this phenomenon from festering in silence, under wraps, as it does in countries run by nationalist and security-based regimes.
The most intense episodes of sectarian violence that Lebanon has seen in its history as an independent country have been tied, in one way or another, to so-called nationalist and liberation struggles; indeed, no other spark has ever lit this fuse. This applies as much to the 1958 mini-war over Nasserism, the Baghdad Pact, and the Eisenhower Doctrine, as it does to the bigger war of 1975 over Palestinian resistance and its 'right' to bear arms to 'liberate Palestine' from Lebanese territory. The same applies to the war against 'Arafatism,' which encompassed 'War of Tripoli' and the 'War of the Camps,' that Hafez al-Assad and his allies fought against Yasser Arafat after charging him with having 'submitted' to Israel. This trajectory culminated in Bashar al-Assad and Hezbollah's assassination of Rafik Hariri, who was accused- like Arafat before him- of 'taking Lebanon from one camp to another.'
The fact is that this singular focus on the role of the West and colonialism is not only a cheap way to exonerate ourselves and avoid taking responsibility, it is also sectarian by definition. By denying our structural flaws, it ensures that the weak remains weak until the end of times.