Syndicated News
How Bashar Al-Asad Built Minority Alliances And Countered Minority Foes
By Phillip Smyth
Bookmark and Share

As the Syrian revolution against Bashar al-Asad's rule enters its first year, Asad appears to have a good command over Syria's large and fractious minority community. Three of the most prominent minority groups include the Christians, Druze, and Kurds. Asad's control of these groups was not happenstance but the result of a number of hard- and soft-power moves executed by the regime. These calculations did not simply involve direct internal dealings with said minorities, but also outreach to their populations living in neighboring states and abroad. Due to the regime's many policies, minority support may continue for some time.

Our way of government is not identical with that which is pursued with such conspicuous success in highly civilised and settled countries like your own. We leave the various communities and tribes alone to settle their internal differences. It is only where tribe wars on tribe, religion on religion, or their quarrels stop the traffic on the Sultan's highway that we interfere. What would you have, mon ami? We are here in Asia!" -- An Ottoman governor in Syria to author Marmaduke Pickthall, late nineteenth century.[1]

INTRODUCTION

Minority alliances in the Middle East have been a constant reality for groups under threat from perceived "majority" interests. Most of these alliances were military in nature and often covert. Israel has reached out to Christians in Lebanon and Kurds in Iraq.[2] Berbers in Morocco have also engaged Israel.[3] In their shared effort to fight Turkey, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) entered into an alliance with the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA).[4] Yet in Syria, where minority Alawites dominate the government and find themselves in conflict with not only the Sunni majority but other minority groups, minority alliances take on a new precedence in their efforts to control the country.

Syria has been described as a "safe haven, in a region where religious minorities often struggle for survival."[5] However, Syria is currently descending into what may become a sectarian civil war, with the mainly Alawi minority-run Ba'thi regime of Bashar al-Asad facing off against Syria's majority, Arab Sunni Muslims. This Levantine state is morphing from a quasi-paradise into a boiling cauldron. The way the Asad regime gained and retained its increasingly important allies in the Druze and Christian communities, and a general quiescence from the Kurds, can be used to chart how long the regime can stay in power, in addition to establishing the solidity of Damascus's important minority alliances.

It is well known that Syria's ruling elite itself comes from a minority, namely the Alawi sect. It has also been asserted that because of the Alawite's own precarious position vis-

Phillip Smyth is a journalist and researcher specializing in Lebanon and the broader Middle East. He travels regularly to the region. He has been published by the American Spectator, the Counterterrorism Blog, the Daily Caller, Haaretz, NOW Lebanon, and PJ Media.

NOTES

[1] Marmaduke Pickthall, Oriental Encounters: Palestine and Syria, 1894-5-6 (London: W. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd, 1918), p. 85.

[2] Moshe Ma’oz, Middle Eastern Minorities: Between Integration and Conflict (Washington, D.C.: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 1999), p. 32.

[3] Bruce Maddy-Weitzman, “Morocco’s Berbers and Israel,” Middle East Quarterly, Vol. 18, No. 1 (Winter 2011), http://www.meforum.org/2853/morocco-berbers-israel.

[4] B



Type your comment and click
or register to post a comment.
* required field
User ID*
enter user ID or e-mail to recover login credentials
Password*