35°7′35″N36°45′7″E / 35.12639°N 36.75194°E /35.12639; 36.75194
| Hama massacre | |
|---|---|
| Part of theIslamist uprising in Syria | |
 | |
| Location |  Hama,Syria |
| Date | 2 February 1982 (1982-02-02) – 28 February 1982; 43 years ago (1982-02-28) |
Attack type | Genocidal massacre,sectarian violence |
| Deaths |
|
| Victims | 100,000 civiliansarbitrarily detained[9] |
| Perpetrators | |
| Defenders |  Muslim Brotherhood |
| Motive | Anti-Sunni sentiment[10] |
TheHama massacre[11] (Arabic:مجزرة حماة) occurred in February 1982 when theSyrian Arab Army and theDefense Companies paramilitary force, under the orders ofPresidentHafez al-Assad,besieged the town ofHama for 27 days in order to quell anuprising by theMuslim Brotherhood against theBa'athist government.[12][13] The campaign that had begun in 1976 bySunni Muslim groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood, was brutally crushed in ananti-Sunni massacre[10] at Hama, carried out by the Syrian Arab Army andAlawite militias under the command ofMajor GeneralRifaat al-Assad.[14]
Prior to the start of operations, Hafez al-Assad issued orders to seal off Hama from the outside world; effectively imposing amedia blackout, total shut down of communications, electricity and food supplies to the city for months.[15] Initial diplomatic dispatches released inWestern media outlets assessed that 1,000 people were killed.[16][17] Subsequent estimates vary, with the lower ones reporting at least 10,000 deaths,[18] while other estimates put the number of deaths at 40,000.[19][20][21][22] The massacre remains the "single deadliest act" of violence perpetrated by an Arab state upon its own population in the modern history of the Middle East.[23][24]
Nearly two-thirds of the city was destroyed in the Ba'athist military operation.[18][25] Robert Fisk, who was present at Hama during the events of the massacre, reported that indiscriminate bombing had razed much of the city to the ground and that the vast majority of the victims were civilians.[26] Fisk later wrote in 2010 that at least 20,000 civilians were killed byRifaat al-Assad'sparamilitary companies in the "streets and underground tunnels of Hama".[27]Patrick Seale, reporting inThe Globe and Mail, described the operation as a "two-week orgy of killing, destruction and looting" which destroyed the city and killed a minimum of 25,000 inhabitants.[2]
The attack has been described as a "genocidal massacre"[28] which was motivated bysectarian animosities against theSunni community of Hama.[b] Memory of the massacre remains an important aspect ofSyrian culture and as a result, it evokes strong emotions amongstSyrians to the present day.[33][34][35] The Hama massacre was invoked by rebel leaders when Ba'athist government forces were driven out of the city following a successfulrebel offensive in December 5 2024 that ultimatelyended the rule of the Assad family over Hama ultimately all of Syria on December 8 2024, with rebel leaders saying they have "come to cleanse the wound that has persisted in Syria for 40 years".[36]
TheBa'ath Party of Syria, which advocatesBa'athism, the ideologies ofArab nationalism andArab socialism, had clashed with theMuslim Brotherhood, a group which advocates aSunniIslamist ideology, since 1940.[37] The two groups were opposed in fundamental ways. The Ba'ath party was nominally secular and nationalist. 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 thesouqs and landed power of Syria, and tended to view government intervention in the economy as threatening their interests.[38] Not all Sunni notables believed in fundamentalism, but even those who did not often saw the Brotherhood as a useful tool against the Ba'ath.[39]
The town ofHama in particular was a "stronghold of Islamic conservatism and of the Muslim Brotherhood," and "had long been a redoubtable opponent of the Ba'athist state."[37] The first full-scale clash between the two occurred shortly after the1963 coup, in which the Ba'ath party first gained power in Syria. InApril 1964, riots broke out in Hama, where Muslim insurgents put up "roadblocks, stockpiled food and weapons, ransacked wine shops." After anIsmaili Ba'ath militiaman 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 sects. However, a more serious challenge occurred after the Syrian invasion of Lebanon in 1976. In October 1980, Muhammad al-Bayanuni, a respected member of the religious hierarchy ofAleppo, became the Islamic Front's Secretary-General, but its leading light remained 'Adnan Sa'd al-Din, the General Supervisor of the Muslim Brothers. The chief ideologue of the Islamic Front was a prominent religious scholar from Hama,Sa'id Hawwa, who along with Sa'd al-Din had been a leader of the northern militants during the mid-1970s.[40] Anti-regime activists such asMarwan Hadid andMuhammad al-Hamid were also carefully listened to.[41]
From 1976 to 1982, Sunni Islamists fought theBa'ath Party-controlled government of Syria in what has been called a "long campaign of terror".[39] In 1979, the Brotherhood undertookguerrilla 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 selective assassinations, particularly of prominent mosque preachers.[42] In July 1980, the ratification of Law No. 49 made membership in the Muslim Brotherhood acapital offence.[43]
Throughout the first years of the 1980s, theMuslim Brotherhood and various other Islamist factions staged hit-and-run and bomb attacks against the government and its officials, including anearly successful attempt to assassinate President Hafez al-Assad on 26 June 1980, during an official state reception for thePresident of Mali. When a machine-gun salvo missed him, al-Assad allegedly ran to kick ahand 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 say from 600 to 1,000 prisoners[42]) were executed in their cells inTadmor Prison (nearPalmyra) by units loyal to the President's brother,Rifaat al-Assad.
In anearlier massacre in 1981, over 300 residents of Hama were killed by the Baathist security forces.
The events of the Hama massacre began at 2 am on 2 February 1982. An army unit searching the old city stumbled on the hideout of the local guerilla commander, Omar Jawwad (aka Abu Bakr), and was ambushed. Other insurgent cells were alerted by radio and "roof-top snipers killed perhaps a score" of Syrian soldiers. Reinforcements were rushed in to besiege Abu Bakr who then "gave the order for a general uprising" in Hama. Mosque loudspeakers used for the call to prayer called for jihad against the Ba'ath, and hundreds of Islamic insurgents rose to attack the homes of government officials andBaath Party leaders, overrun police posts and ransack armouries. They carried out attacks, especially in the northern cities, on government buildings, cooperative stores, police stations, and army units, and provoked demonstrations and large-scale shutdowns of shops and schools. The Brotherhood, having already benefited from training provided to Muslim militants in Iraqi army camps, was also assured of comprehensive assistance from Iraq in the form of weaponry and financial resources.[44] By daybreak of the morning of 2 February, some 70 leading Ba'athists had been killed and the Islamist insurgents and other opposition activists proclaimed Hama a "liberated city", urging Syrians to rise up against the "infidel".[45][46]
According to authorPatrick Seale, "every party worker, every paratrooper sent to Hama knew that this time Islamic militancy had to be torn out of the city, whatever the cost". The military was mobilized, and President Hafez al-Assad sent Rifaat's special forces (theDefense Companies), elite army units andMukhabarat agents to the city. Before the attack, the Syrian government called for the city's surrender and warned that anyone remaining in the city would be considered a rebel. Hama was besieged by 12,000 troops for three weeks – the first week spent "in regaining control of the town", and the last two "in hunting down the insurgents".[45]Robert Fisk, a journalist who was in Hama midway through the battle, described civilians fleeing pervasive destruction.[47]
According toAmnesty International, the Syrian military bombed the old city center from the air to facilitate the entry of infantry and tanks through the narrow streets; buildings were demolished by tanks during the first four days of fighting. Large parts of the old city were destroyed. There were also unsubstantiated reports of use ofhydrogen cyanide by the government forces.[48]
Rifaat's forces ringed the city with artillery, shelled it, then combed the rubble for surviving Muslim Brotherhood members and supporters.[49] Suspecting that rebels were still hiding in tunnels under the old city, he had diesel fuel pumped into them and stationed tanks at their entrances to shell fleeing militants.[50] Alawite military units loyal to Rifaat al-Assad, such as theDefense Companies, entered the city and indiscriminately massacred thousands ofSunni civilian survivors.[51]
The indiscriminate bombardment by government forces razed much of the city's districts, streets, heritage sites, mosques and churches. TheAzm Palace was severely damaged. Baathist paramilitaries continued looting for weeks and numerous families were rounded up and shot.[52][53] Baathist dissidentAkram al-Hawrani asserted that women, children and all Hama inhabitants irrespective of their political leanings were targeted indiscriminately during the regime onslaught. Even Ba'ath Party members, according to Hawrani, were victims of the "savage slaughter" ordered by Hafez al-Assad.[34]
Initial diplomatic reports from western governments in 1982 had stated that 1,000 were killed in the fighting.[16][17] Subsequent estimates of casualties varied from 5,000 to 40,000 people killed, including about 1,000 soldiers. Robert Fisk, who was in Hama shortly after the massacre, originally estimated fatalities at 10,000, but has since doubled the estimate to 20,000.[12][54][55] Major General Rifaat al-Assad, the brother of President al-Assad, reportedly boasted of killing 38,000 people.[56]Amnesty International initially estimated the death toll was between 10,000 and 25,000.[23] According to a Human Rights Watch report published in 1990, the massacre saw the deaths of between five and ten thousand people.[57]Reports by Syrian Human Rights Committee claimed "over 25,000"[58] or between 30,000 and 40,000 people were killed.[21]
Twenty years later, Syrian journalist Subhi Hadidi, wrote that forces "under the command of GeneralAli Haydar, besieged the city for 27 days, bombarding it with heavy artillery and tank [fire], before invading it and killing 30,000 or 40,000 of the city's citizens – in addition to the 15,000 missing who have not been found to this day, and the 100,000 expelled."[13] A report published by theSyrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) on the 40th anniversary of the Hama massacre estimates that around 40,000 inhabitants were killed in the massacre; in addition to about 17,000 civilians who were disappeared and have not been found as of the present day.[22]
Around two-thirds of the city was demolished in the military operations during the massacre.[25][18] After the Hama massacre, the Islamic revolution was crushed, and since then, the Brotherhood has operated in exile and other opposition factions either surrendered or slipped into hiding. Government attitudes in Syria hardened considerably during the uprising, and President Assad would rely more on repression than he would rely on political tactics during the remainder of his rule, although an economic liberalization program was launched in the 1990s.[59]
After the massacre, the already evident disarray in the insurgents' ranks increased, and the rebel factions experienced acrimonious internal splits. Particularly damaging to their cause was the deterrent effect of the massacre, as well as the realization that no Sunni uprisings had occurred in the rest of the country in support of the Hama rebels. Most of the members of the rebel groups either fled from the country or remained in exile, mainly inIran, while others made their way to the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany.[60] The Muslim Brotherhood—the largest opposition group—split into two factions, after giving up on armed struggle. One faction, more moderate than the other faction and recognized by the international Muslim Brotherhood, eventually headquartered itself in the UK, where it remains today, while the less moderate faction headquartered itself inIran and retained a military structure for several years, with backing from theIranian government, before it rejoined the London-based mainstream.
Internationally, the Hama massacre became a symbol of the al-Assad government'shuman rights violations as well as a symbol of its brutal repression.[43][61] Within Syria, mention of the massacre was strictly suppressed by the Assad regime; however, the general contours of the events—and various partisan versions, on all sides—are well known throughout the country. When the massacre was publicly referenced, it was only referenced as the "events" or it was referenced as the "incident" at Hama. In 2012, ProfessorGregory Stanton of Genocide Watch characterized the Hama massacre as a 'genocidal massacre', and he also stated that its methods could prompt the regime to pursue future mass killings during theSyrian civil war (which was just beginning at the time).[62]
Memory of the Hama Massacre has become an important aspect ofSyrian culture and on an emotional level, it has evoked a strong feeling of resentment amongst Syrians to the present day.[33][34] During theSyrian Revolution in 2011, older Syrians frequently warned younger activists about theAssad regime's determination to "do Hama again", i.e., its willingness to exterminate hundreds of thousands of civilians in order to ensure its survival.[63] The satirical slogan "Asad 'alayya wa fil-hurubi na'amah (Against me a lion and in wars an ostrich...)" became popular amongst Syrian dissidents for Hafez al-Assad's comparatively muted response to theIsraeli invasion of Lebanon the same year.[34]
In December 2013,human rights organization "Trial International" filed a criminal lawsuit againstRifaat al-Assad over his role as commander ofDefense Brigades that organized the ground campaign of the massacre. Charges in the war-crimes lawsuit included organizingextrajudicial killings, large-scaletorture,sexual violence, mass-rapes,summary executions andforced disappearances.[64][25]
A criminal investigation was launched by the SwissOffice of the Attorney General the same year. Almost a decade later in August 2023, theFederal Criminal Court ordered the extradition of Rifa'at al-Assad, promptingSwitzerland to issue anarrest warrant to prosecute him.[65][66][25]
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: editors list (link){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: editors list (link)In the wake of the tense period stretching from the Aleppo incident in 1979 to the Hama massacre in 1982, the regime accentuated the Alawitization of its coercive apparatus as its dependency on its sectarian base increased... regime violence against Sunnis did not begin in 2011, and was never restricted to the Muslim Brotherhood alone. Even Patrick Seale, who wrote an otherwise sympathetic biography of Hafez al-Asad, admits that thousands of Sunni civilians were slaughtered during the notorious Hama massacre in 1982 by the all-Alawi Defense Companies after the city fell. Human rights organizations have documented a series of other horrendous massacres of Sunnis that may not have reached Hama's level of violence, but were extremely bloody, nonetheless.
Tensions and political strife have been an on-going theme in Syria due in large part to the opposing ideologies of the regime's ruling Alawite minority -- Baathist socialism- and the Sunni Muslim majority, which makes up three quarters of the country's population, and largely favors adherence to Islamic law. After the Hama Massacre of 1982- a 'scorched earth' operation that killed 20,000 people to combat an attempted Sunni Muslim uprising- the government became increasingly authoritarian, relying on repressive policies to maintain control.
In Damascus there was a moment of something like panic when Hama rose. The regime itself shook... Behind the immediate contest lay the old multi-layered hostility between Islam and the Ba'th, between Sunni and 'Alawi, between town and country.
The most infamous crackdown, however, occurred in early 1982, when al-Assad ordered a brutal crackdown on the defiant city of Hama, where the Sunni Muslim community continued to defy the regime..
in addition to the training already provided to Muslim militants in the camps of the Iraqi army, the Brotherhood could count on Iraq for "full support with arms and money."
