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Brotherhood's Walking Korans
Hillel Fradkin and Lewis Libby
Article 4.
Foreign Affairs
Alawites for Assad: Why the Syrian Sect Backs the
Regime
Leon Goldsmith
Article 5.
Project Syndicate ... guides the Institute's program on
national security and defense issues.
Foreign Affairs
Alawites for Assad: Why the Syrian Sect
Backs the Regime
Leon Goldsmith
April 16, 2012 -- Since ... start of the revolt in Syria, the country's
Alawites have been instrumental in maintaining President Bashar al-
Assad's hold on power. A sect of Shia Islam, the Alawites
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that it must reach out to
the Syrian minorities allied with the regime — Alawites, Christians and
Druze — and reassure them that they will have substantial representation
in any new post ... piece with this
sordid lot. He had risen from poverty, an Alawite soldier who came to
power and fortune when he married the late dictator Hafez Assad's only
daughter ... figurehead in a regime that exalted and
trusted only the dominant sect, the Alawites.
The Assads can be said to have brought the Alawites both spoils and peril.
They took
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prediction. "The next genocide in the world," he said, "will =ikely be against the Alawites in
Syria<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/newsAnternational/countriesandterritories/syria/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>.=94
A few months ago, talk of possible massacres ... Alawites, who dominate Bash=r al-
Assad<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/a/ba=har_al_assad/index.html?inline=nyt-per>'s
government in Syria, seemed =ike pro-regime propaganda. Now, it is a real possibility.
For more than a year ... Following the rise to power of Mr. Assad's father, Hafez, in 1970, Alawit=s were transformed from a persecuted minority
sect to the controlling forc= within the army
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Assad, Bashar's father, came to
power, his regime, dominated by members of the Alawite branch of
Islam, embodied the neglected countryside, its peasants and exploited
underclass. Today's ruling ... provinces' expense. Some protesters display thuggish, sectarian and
violent behavior. But given the Alawite security services' own
thuggishness and violence — sweeping arrests, torture and instances
of collective punishment have been ... firing cucumbers.
The regime hopes to rely on Syria's "silent majority": minorities,
notably Alawites and Christians, alarmed about a possible takeover
by Islamists; the middle class (typically state employees
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perhaps optimistic to ev=r imagine that the fighting between Syria's Alawite regime and the Sunni=led
rebellion would remain within the country's borders. Syria is at once ... country's s=cond-largest
city. But Tripoli, staunchly Sunni, with an Alawite minority, has always been within the orbit of the S=rian city of Horns ... mystery that a deadly conflict now rages in=Tripoli between Sunni and Alawite neighborhoods, rendering the
place ungov=rnable. Sunni jihadists and preachers see the Syrian struggle as their
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actual possibility. Syria could fracture into pieces. In a way,
it already has. An Alawite rump state backed by Iran, Hezbollah, and
Russia existing alongside a Sunnistan ruled by Islamists ... Gelb says, perhaps a power-sharing agreement between the
moderate Sunni majority and the Alawite (Shiite) minority can be reached.
Secretary of State John Kerry is in the Middle East ... sides focusing on [fighting the jihadis]—because they are the biggest threat
to the Alawite Assad family and the Sunni moderates. The Alawites know
that if the jihadis come
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violent bid for independence. Ankara is
convinced that PKK fighters allied with the Alawite
regime have taken control of parts of Syria,
particularly in ethnically Kurdish areas of the country ... Iraqi
regime (rightly) claims that it is fighting the same
terrorists that the Alawite Syrian regime is struggling
with on the other side of the border. As the Alawites ... heavily engaged,
Iran might press Baghdad to increase its direct support
of the Alawites and step up its own aid. Baghdad will
be reluctant, but it might feel more inclined
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violent bid for
independence. Ankara is convinced that PKK fighters allied with the
Alawite regime have taken control of parts of Syria, particularly in
ethnically Kurdish areas of the country ... Iraqi regime (rightly) claims that it is fighting the
same terrorists that the Alawite Syrian regime is struggling with on the
other side of the border. As the Alawites ... heavily engaged,
Iran might press Baghdad to increase its direct support of the Alawites and
step up its own aid. Baghdad will be reluctant, but it might feel more
inclined
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violent bid for independence. Ankara is
convinced that PKK fighters allied with the Alawite
regime have taken control of parts of Syria,
particularly in ethnically Kurdish areas of the country ... Iraqi
regime (rightly) claims that it is fighting the same
terrorists that the Alawite Syrian regime is struggling
with on the other side of the border. As the Alawites ... heavily engaged,
Iran might press Baghdad to increase its direct support
of the Alawites and step up its own aid. Baghdad will
be reluctant, but it might feel more inclined
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Hamas to
remain based in Damascus while the Assad government, dominated by
Syria's Alawite Muslim minority, was killing fellow Sunni Arabs.
He said it made sense for Hamas ... find a political solution
to the crisis. Such a coup would be led by Alawite and Sunni armed forces
officers who would recognize the need to make a deal with ... demonstrators and send Syria onto a path of serious political
democratization, while sparing the Alawite community from widespread
retributions after the fall of the House of Assad. A variation
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Ashura, or the
more than 30 unidentified people whose bodies were dumped in an
Alawite neighborhood in Homs, Syria, the same day. They matter for
anyone who wants ... military and secret police. They, along with perhaps 3.5
million other Syrians, are Alawites. Although the point is rarely
noted, the Alawites are a type of Shiite sect. (For example ... point of considering him divine.
Indeed, the sectarian-Shiite aspect of the Alawite faith helped
facilitate the Assad regime's contacts with Shiite Iran.
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Caught in the middle
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region as Hezbollah, a Shiite
group, and Iran back a government dominated by Alawites, who follow an
offshoot of Shiism, against mainly Sunni Muslim rebels.
Mr. Nasrallah, though, sought ... Iraqi and Lebanese
Shi'ites, and last but not least the country's Alawite minority. An alignment
of revolutionary Iran and the Syrian Alawites has been in formation since ... Hasan Mandi Al-Shirazi and Musa
Al-Sadr's issuance of fatwas arguing that Alawites are members of the
Shi'ite sect.
Pulled into this sectarian quagmire, Turkey has tempered
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there. Syria is also a highly tribalized
and sectarian-divided country. Its Shiite-leaning Alawite
minority — led by the Assads and comprising 12 percent of the
population — dominates the government ... sectarian aspirations — the raw desire by
Syria's Sunni majority to oust the Alawite minority — begin.
As a result, most Alawites are rallying to Assad, as are some
Sunnis ... benefitted from his regime, particularly in
Aleppo and Damascus, the capital. These pro-regime Alawites
and Sunnis see the chaos and soccer riots in Egypt and say to
themselves: "Assad
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absolute power, creating a regime in which power
rested with the country's Alawite minority. The marriage of
despotism and sectarianism begat the most fearsome state in the
Arab east ... Druze areas and the mountain villages and coastal
towns that make up the Alawite strongholds. The violence in the
Syrian uprising has been most pronounced in Horns, the
country ... third-largest city, because of its explosive
demographics -- two-thirds Sunni, one-quarter Alawite, one-
tenth Christian.
Sectarianism was not all, of course. Syria has had one of the
highest
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collapse. The reasons are fairly straightforward. The al
Assad clan belongs to Syria's Alawite minority, who only 40 years
ago were living under the thumb of the country ... time, and vengeance
is a powerful force in this part of the world. The Alawites understand
that they face an existential crisis, and if they allow their grip over ... likely become the prime targets of a
Sunni vendetta campaign aiming to return the Alawites to their
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subservient status. This may explain why al Assad
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held together in its
presidential family and its top military echelons by Alawites-a
religious minority that may be characterized as Shi'ite or syncretist,
depending on who is articulating ... beliefs. And those Alawite
leaders have, instead of a revolutionary heritage to draw on, the ugly
memory of the father and uncle of the current leaders stomping down
revolt ... with violence or preemptive presence. These
heavily Sunni tribal areas mutter darkly against the Alawite leaders of
the country, and their own Alawite neighbors.
No city wants the honor
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negotiated solution.
In particular, there is a growing danger of Sunni
retaliation against the Alawite minority, which
comprises 12 percent of the population, but controls
the government, the economy ... army. The
Alawites, who overcame second-class citizenship only
when Assad's Baath party came to power in 1963,
now believe that their very survival is linked to that ... regime.
If the Syrian opposition does not take the Alawites'
concerns seriously, the country could be wracked by
years of civil war, worse than the conflict that
devastated Lebanon from
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sphere of influence, and he is a member of a minority
Islamic sect, the Alawites, that has had a chokehold on power in
Syria for decades.
SONY_GM_00078425
Confidential ... opposition is nourished by the
hatred the Sunni majority in Syria feels for the Alawite regime, but
also by widespread feelings that the regime is outmoded, corrupt, and
is blocking ... real difference between the
military and the ruling authorities in Syria. Both reflect Alawite
hegemony, and the various components of the elite know full well
what price they will
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