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Syria was once regarded as a
frontier region, bordered to the east by the Arabs and Persians. The
Persian invasions were repulsed but Syria eventually fell to the
Muslims in the mid-seventh century. From then on, Syria was to be
firmly part of the Muslim world,
although retaining
Christian and Jewish populations. Muslim control of Syria was vital
to the defeat of the Christians and their expulsion from Jerusalem.
Even when the terrifying force of the 13th century Mongols was
unleashed on Syria, their massive Hulagu army was eventually
defeated at the Battle of Goliath’s Well – a victory that, in
retrospect, must be seen as one of the world’s most decisive
military engagements, preventing both the Muslim world – and the
Christian one – from certain doom.
Today, Syria's Islamic identity is as central to the country as its
Arab roots. Such doctrine over-spilled into Arab nationalism in the
1950s - indeed, Nasser’s revolution in Egypt prompted Syria to join
Egypt in the United Arab Republic. However, the alliance was
short-lived, Syria seceding in 1961 to form the Syrian Arab
Republic. Since then, Syria has been ruled at the head of a tightly
controlled dictatorship. Even when General Hafez al-Assad of the
Ba’ath Party (or Arab Socialist Renaissance) died in 2000, and his
son Bashar assumed headship, Western hopes that the country would
pursue a more pro-Western line proved misguided – in the vocabulary
of the US Bush administration, the Syrian Arab Republic is a ‘state
of concern’ (one level below the ‘axis of evil’). | 
