Red Horse Rising

The news media have taken a long time to catch with the struggle in Syria. For a long time, they described it as another pro-democracy movement in the Spirit of the Arab spring. Only in the last few months have they admitted that a civil war is underway.

The situation in Syria is exacerbated by being the fault line for several larger struggles.

• Prior to the first world war, Syria was part of the Ottoman Empire, which was based in Turkey Some political leaders would like re-assert Turkish influence in Syria.

• The dregs of the Cold War still stewing in the Middle East. Russia has a naval base at Tartus in the western Syria that gives it access to the Mediterranean Sea. The US would love to see the Russians squeezed out of the Mediterranean.

• Syria is on the fragile fault line between the Shia and Sunni forms of Islam. The Assad government is Alawite, which is a sect of Shia Islam, while the majority of the population is Sunni.

• The Shia revival is centred on Iran. Syria is has been allied with Iran. The war in Iran has strengthened the position of Shia Islam in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia and more recently Qatar are the leading Sunni nations, although they have much smaller populations. They see Syria as an opportunity to engage in a proxy battle against Iran.

• Between the wars, Syria was a French Mandate. The French have many economic interests in the area, and are always looking for to expand their influence by dabbling in the Middle East.

• Nations with major weapons industries are flooding the area with cheap weapons to sustain their economies through the economic turn down.

The existence of these vested interests make it almost impossible for the United Nations or any other group to mediate a solution. Every proposal for peace has an interested party from the other side that opposes it. Moreover, most of these external interests are fuelling the dispute by providing financial support and supplying weapons to the participants in the civil war.

Syria was part of the Ottoman Empire. It only became a nation at the end of the First World War. The Middle East was split by the Sykes-Picot Agreement between France and Britain in 1916 along artificial national borders that gave no recognition to the different people that populated the region. The European powers ignored local interests, because their main object was to ensure access and control of oil supply, but their short-sightedness is coming back to haunt the world.

Syria is a nation made up of different tribal groups. The majority of the population are Sunni Moslems, but most have been shut out of political power. A number of minority ethnic and religious groups are spread round the country. The Alawite people originally lived in the west of Syria, but many have moved to the big cities of Damascus and Aleppo. A significance group of Kurdish people lie in the North East of Syria. The tensions between these groups have been suppressed by the Assad government. The civil is creating a new set of hatreds that will make these tensions worse.

To understand Syria, we must recognise that Red Horse of Revelation has been released. This horse represents military struggles between ethnic groups that will tear apart nations that were established during the age of nationalism in the 19th and 20th centuries. The Assad family dictatorship has kept a lid on the ethnic tensions in Syria, but when the regime eventually falls, these cooped up ethnic forces will destroy the unity of the nation. The “big sword” indicates the ferocity of these struggles. The bitter struggle in Syria is an example of this big sword.

The capital of Syria is Damascus. It has had a continued existing going back to the time of the Old Testament. Isaiah prophesied the destruction of Damascus, but he did not explain how it would happen.

A prophecy against Damascus: See, Damascus will no longer be a city, but will become a heap of ruins (Is 17:1).

If the struggle for Syria continues on and grows in bitterness, Damascus could end up as a heap of ruins.

Note: the Red Horse is not a sign of the second coming of Jesus. Its role in God’s plan for history is described in Times an Seasons.