Syria Compared to Egypt Over Time Essay

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Syria vs. Egypt -- Compare & Contrast

While Egypt and Syria are both very prominent and on the front page of the news all the time around the world, the countries are quite different overall and this includes the path they took when it comes to their history and developments over the years. This paper will compare and contrast how they countries are different right now and how they have changed over time. The important factors and facets that will be focused on will include their geography, religion, ethnicity, governmental structures and how all of these have changed over time. The majority and minority populations in both countries will be covered as well. While Egypt and Syria have both been melting pots of change and evolution in recent years, they have done so in very different ways.

Analysis

The author of this report will cover Egypt first. About ninety-five percent of Egypt is desert. The vast majority of the population, that being about 88 million people, lives in the Nle Valley. In terms of geography, Egypt is bordered on the north and the east by water. This would be by the Mediterranean See and Red Sea, respectively. There is The Sudan to the south and Libya to the west. The land in Egypt is very float and thus easy to control. About ninety percent of the country is Sunni and most of the rest are Coptic. The latter group are the largest Christian majority and they number in the seven to eight million range. The Sunnis would be Muslim. In terms of control over Egypt over the years, the area was controlled by Great Britain as of 1882. It became a protectorate of Great Britain in 1914. The latter of those two occupations is what severed the link between Egypt and the Ottoman Empire. Both Great Britain and France had a lot of influence in the area during the two World Wars. Egypt tried to gain their independence from European control in 1918 but the Suez Canal, which is the only major link between one side of the Asia/Africa/Europe landmass, was deemed to be too vital to relinquish. Egypt responded to this continued occupation with violence but Britain reacted very firmly. Eventually the British and the elected king co-ruled the country. This was around the time, that being in 1928, when the Muslim Brotherhood came into being. Egypt came into its own and gained independence under the rule of Neguib at first. However, Nasser was the "real" leader and became the actual leader soon after Neguib took office. By this time, Egypt was having spats with Israel but they were soundly defeated in the late 1940's. There was another flare-up involving the Suez Canal in 1956 (Gellar).

Over the years, Egypt remained under some form of military control and dictatorship until 2011. The leaders over these times were Nasser, Sadat and then Mubarak, in that order. Much of that time has involved more spats with Israel but things finally calmed down after the war of 1967 and this continued through 1975. Israel won soundly on multiple occasions. They got the Sinai back only because they signed a peace deal in 1979. This led to good things for Egypt, though. Even though there were many people starving and suffering, Egypt got access to advanced weaponry from the United States. Arabs did not like this as they hated Israel and/or the United States in a lot of instances. Mubarak continued this pattern started with Sadat when he took over. However, the uproars and protests persisted. Mubarak jailed many people but the toll on the country was severe. Things came to a head in 2011 when Mubarak was forced out via resignation and Morsi was elected to replace him. Morsi immediately made a power grab but was removed via a coup d'etat by the Egyptian military. Since then, a leader of that military stepped down and soundly won elections (Gellar).

The story of Syria is quite similar to Egypt. Like Egypt, Syria is majority Sunni but there are also some minorities in the country scattered about. They are bordered on the east by the Mediterranean Sea. There is also Lebanon tucked in between part of their western border and Syria. Jordan borders Syria to the south and Iraq is to the east. Turkey lies to the north. Egypt is bordered on two sides by water and has the Nile running through it. Syria's border with the Mediterranean See is rather small and there is nothing remotely like the Nile in Syria.

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Also like Syria, both France and Great Britain were meddling and were fighting for control over the area. When the Ottoman Empire was dissolved, the two countries agreed to split some of the countries in play. France got Syria and Lebanon. There was a man named Feisal who proclaimed himself King of Syria but the French expelled him. For a time, Syria was subdivided into Aleppo, Damascus and Jabal Druze. This shifted into Syria being its own state after the first World War. One major difference between Egypt and Syria is that Syria is very mountainous whereas Egypt, as mentioned before, is devoid of mountains. Yet another different with Syria is that while there is a Sunni majority in Syria (just like Egypt), it is not nearly as dominant. Indeed, the percentage in Egypt is 90% but it is only 70% in Syria. Another fifteen percent of Sunni population in Egypt is Kurdish. Of the thirty percent minority, about ten to twelve percent are Alawis, about the same amount of Christians exist and the other four to seven percent are Shia or Ismalis (Gellar).

The way in which France and Great Britain controlled Syria and Egypt, respectively, was noticeably different. Great Britain would appoint people that "owe" them as king of monarchies and they would do the bidding of their British friends. This was their tactic in Egypt. France, on the other hand, did not make use of monarchies. There was a French High Commissioner and they would appoint certain Sunnis to run Syria. However, law and order would be upheld by in Syria by people other than Sunnis. The non-Sunnis commonly used were Coptic Christians. This is in stark contrast to the British and how they handled Egypt. Britain did not empower the Coptic people in Egypt in any measurable way, whether it be leadership or law enforcement. France's control over Syria was compromised when France fell during World War II. This led to the Vichy government and they actively worked with and cooperate with the Nazis. The prior French territories (including Syria) were led by Vichy loyalists. This was beat back by the French and the UK in 1941. France dangled independence but ended up reneging. It got to the point where Great Britain allied with Syria and its push for independence. This is another thing in contrast with what happened with Egypt and how they came into their own via military force and oppression. However, the French finally relented in 1946 and left. Rather than face oppression and elimination, many minorities in the country at that time became Arab nationalists. Even so, the Sunnis were seen as the "real" Arabs (Gellar).

Unlike Egypt, there was a huge amount of turnover during the 1950's after the second World War. Indeed, Neguib was not around long in Egypt after the second World War, there have only been five leaders since then in Egypt and three of those make up the vast majority of that time, those being Nasser, Sadat and Mubarak. Morsi's tenure was short because he overreached (not unlike the self-proclaimed King of Damascus ... but at least Morsi was elected) and El-Sisi (the ex-military person just elected) has not been on the job very long. By contrast, leadership in Syria was a proverbial hot potato during the 1950's but the Ba'athists eventually emerged and this itself eventually led to the Assad family coming into power in the form of Hafez Al-Assad. So to compare and contrast, both Egypt and Syria had some tumult in terms of leadership upon independence. However, a Ba'athist family in the form of the Assads became the leaders in Syria whereas Egypt has been mostly controlled by military strongmen that are not related (Gellar, 2016). Some quite interesting about the Assads is that Hafez (and, by extension, his son) have Alawite backgrounds as Hafez was born in the Alawite region of northwestern Syria. This is not unlike Iraq in that the Sunnis are a minority there and Saddam Hussein was a Sunni. Also like the Asad, he was a Ba'athist. The Asads have had exclusive control of Syria since 1970, a span of more than two generations. However, they had five leaders from 1943 to 1969, a span of only 26 years (Gellar) (Cleveland, and Bunton).

Another similarity between the two countries is that both of them had solidarity or agreements with the Soviet Union during its existence. Even with the dissolution of the.....

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