Country Information

The population of the Syrian Arab Republic is 18.4 million. People of Arab ethnicity comprise 90.3% of the population. Minority ethnic groups include the Kurds (9%) and Armenians(<1%), Circassians(<1%), Turkomens (<1%), Jews (<1%), and Palestinians (<1%). The major religious groups in Syria include the Sunni Muslims (74%), Alawite, Druze and other Muslim sects (16%), and Christians (10%). Arabic is the primary language and English and French are understood in some areas. Kirmanji (the Kurdish language), Armenian, and Turkish are also spoken among minority populations. The government is socialist republic that has been in a declared state of emergency since 1963. While the government claims to be secular, law is based on Islamic jurisprudence and an Alawite minority controls the Ba’ath party. The president is Bashar al Assad.

Political and Economic Environment

With the break up of the Ottoman Empire under the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, the newly created state of Syria fell under the mandate of France. The violent relationship between the French and the Syrian population ended in 1946 when Syria declared independence. Arab nationalism and socialist ideologies, guiding principles of Syria throughout its history and in current politics, took hold in Syria in the 1940s and 50s with the rise in power of the Ba’ath party. These trends led to the 1958 merger between Syria and Egypt to create the United Arab Republic. However, the UAR reverted to its original entities in 1961 during a coup that founded the modern state called the Syrian Arab Republic.

In 1963, a coup established the Ba’aths as the ruling party of the state and a state of emergency, augmenting the powers of the president, was declared in reaction to precarious relations with Israel. The year 1971 saw the coming to power of Hafez al Assad, who was Syria’s president until his death in 2000. Under his regime, Syrian forces occupied Lebanon despite growing international pressure to withdraw and the government violently suppressed an insurgency by the Muslim Brotherhood.

In 2000, Hafez al Assad’s son, Bashar al Assad became president. Since his election, promises have been made to reinstitute civil and political freedoms and to address human rights violations in Syria. However, human rights bodies continue to report the failure of the Syrian government to do so. In 2005, the Ba’ath party voted to ease the state of emergency, limiting it to deal only with crimes that threaten state security.

The economy of Syria is based on agriculture, industry, and energy. As a middle income developing country, primary areas of concern are the sustainability of its energy resources, high unemployment, and foreign debt. According to its socialist state constitution, major enterprises are under government management. Yet liberalization may soon become part of economic policy as Syria has submitted a request to join the World Trade Organization. It is also seeking to strengthen its relationship with the European Union through participation in the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership.

Humanitarian Situation

The violence in neighboring Iraq has increased the number of Iraqi refugees in recent years to roughly 500,000. Though Syria granted Iraqis temporary protected status following the 2003 invasion of that country, the status was rescinded in 2005 after it appeared that there would not be major flows out of Iraq. Since an increase in sectarian violence in Iraq, most notably after February 2006, flows into Syria have increased, and UNHCR has estimated that approximately 40,000 Iraqis entered Syria each month from June to September 2006, with no signs of a slowdown. Currently, Iraqi refugees in Syria are not eligible to work. As a result, dwindling personal resources due to the extended nature of the conflict in Iraq are putting Iraqi refugees at increasing risk. Though UNHCR has recently drawn renewed attention to the plight of Iraqi refugees in the region, their budget for this issue has been drastically cut, from $150 million in 2003 to $29 million in 2006. As a result, there is little international support for Iraqis in Syria.

Under the leadership of President Qudsi at the height of Arab national feeling in the country in 1962, a census was taken of the Al-Hasakah province in Northeast Syria. The purpose was to take account of Kurds with legal Syrian citizenship, which by the state’s definition included only those who resided in Syrian territory prior to 1945. It was deemed by many sources as arbitrary since it often split Kurdish families by classifying some as citizens and others as illegal immigrants. The census resulted in the invalidation of the citizenship of 120,000 Kurds, many of whom had been born on Syrian soil and/or to a Syrian parent. Citizenship by Syrian law is defined by both jus soli and jus sanguinis, meaning that birth on Syrian territory and/or birth to a Syrian father ensures citizenship. Without citizenship, these people lack the rights to work, own land, take advantage of the state’s education and healthcare programs, and to travel. Their expropriated lands were sold to “legal” Syrian citizens, leading to internal displacement. The maktoumeen, or “the unregistered,” refer to those born of the denationalized Kurds and also of a union between a Syrian woman and a “foreign” man who also lack citizenship and related rights.

The Kurdish population continues to face obstacles to basic human rights. The state’s “Arabization” and nationalism campaigns in 1960s and 70s, to heighten state control of all internal social spheres by restricting political and civil rights, worked to the detriment of the Kurdish people. These discriminatory programs ban the Kurdish language, Kirmanji, (including verbal use, use in publications, and in naming children), cultural displays (such as the playing of Kurdish music), and the formation of Kurdish civil and political groups. While the creation of a Kurdish autonomous zone in Iraq has pushed the Kurdish issue to the forefront in Syria, the majority of stateless Kurds claim a desire for citizenship and not autonomy.

In 2004 several Kurdish activists were detained during a peaceful demonstration on International Human Rights Day in Damascus. In March of that same year violence broke out between the Kurdish and Arab populations at a soccer game in the town of Qamishli in the Northeast, which was violently put down by the government. Several Kurds were killed and hundreds were detained. In early 2005 Sheikh Mohammed Mashouq al-Khaznawi, a moderate Islamic cleric and an advocate for Kurdish rights, was murdered in a killing believed to have been ordered by state officials.

In addition to the stateless Kurds, the government estimates that there are 150,000 internally displaced persons due to Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights. Syria is also host to more than 400,000 Palestinian refugees, most living in ten UNRWA camps. While these refugees are not eligible for citizenship, they are permitted several rights of citizens.

Other refugee nationalities include Somali, Sudanese, Tunisian, Yemeni, Iranian, and Afghan. Although Syria is not party to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention nor does it permit permanent asylum, the state is generally tolerant of refugees.

Updated October 2006