The Levantine Crescent:    Israel | Jordan | Lebanon | Palestine | Syria

Of all the people of Ottoman-controlled Syria, none were more persecuted that the Alawites. Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, the Thomas Aquinas of Islam, wrote that the Alawites “apostatize in matters of blood, money, marriage, and butchering, so it is a duty to kill them.” Generation after generation of Sunni rulers took his advice to heart, as this reclusive sect faced repeated massacres and constant persecution. Even after the Ottoman Empire crumbled and World War I brought the French Mandate, the Alawites remained the lowest of Syria’s low. The French rule brought them some measure of autonomy, but economic opportunities remained limited. Only the Homs (Military Academy), a career path scorned by landowning Sunnis, offered enterprising Alawites a chance for advancement.

And so, much as America’s military has a disproportionate number of Black soldiers, Syria’s military became disproportionately Alawite. A minority group representing 12% of Syria’s population made up more than half its armed forces at the time of the 1963 coup. Among the leaders of that coup was a young Alawite officer named Hafiz al-Assad. The son of a farmer, Assad distinguished himself first as a student and later as a combat pilot and leader of the pan-Arabic Ba’ath Party. After Syria’s humiliating defeat in the 1967 Six-Day War, Assad’s meteoric rise through the ranks continued and culminated, in 1971, with his appointment as Syria’s Prime Minister.

Assad’s ascension to power was not without controversy. The Muslim Brotherhood, a loose collective of Sunni radicals, objected to the Ba’ath Party’s secularism as much as they resented Alawite rule. In June 1979 Muslim Brotherhood gunman killed 50 Alawite cadets at the Aleppo military academy; in June 1980 they made an unsuccessful attempt on Assad’s life. Only in February of 1982, after a bloody military battle which left an estimated 25,000 people dead, would Assad be able to quell disturbances among Syria’s Sunni fundamentalists. Syria keeps a large military contingent in Lebanon to keep down any Sunni uprising there; its current rulership has as much to lose from a radical Islamic state in Lebanon as Israel does.

Assad’s relationship with Iran’s Shi’ite fundamentalists, on the other hand, proved far more rewarding. After the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War Syria took Iran’s side, much to the consternation of many of the Arab states. Like Shi’ites, Alawites hold the Caliph Ali in high regard (hence the name), and have often claimed to be a branch of Shi’a Islam. Iran’s religious leaders still consider Alawism heretical, but they have repaid Syria’s overtures with generous funding and with a steady supply of oil. In return, Syria has provided support for the Shi’ite radical group Hizbollah, granting it bases from which to launch attacks on the disputed Shebaa Farms region. This close relationship has led many analysts to warn of a “Shi’ite Belt” of rebellion. Should the fervor which created the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979 reappear in the former Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan (also majority Shi’ite), and should the Shi’ites come to power in Lebanon, we could find ourselves faced with a belt of radical anti-Western states stretching from the Mediterranean to China… and civil war in Moslem states with significant Shi’ite minorities, like Afghanistan and Pakistan.

If Assad had little tolerance for Islamic radicals, he had even less for the State of Israel. Syria has participated in every war against Israel, has been among Israel’s harshest critics, and has regularly been implicated in supporting anti-Israel and anti-American terrorism. Much of this anger stems from Israel’s occupation of the Golan Heights, and its attendant control over much of the region’s water. (Water is a continuing issue in this arid region: disputes over rights to the Euphrates led to Syrian support for Kurdish rebels and a 1998 near-war with Turkey). Much of it has also been theatrical. Assad was well aware of his own marginal place among Syria’s majority Sunni population, and was much happier to see their anger aimed at “Zionist infidels” than at “Alawite heretics.”

Throughout his tenure Assad proved himself to be a master politician, adept at stirring up feelings and ruthless when faced with dissension. His death in 2000 left a power vacuum; as is common in strongman dictatorships, Assad’s passing left no obvious successor. For the time his son Bashar Assad, a 35-year old physician, is in charge. Bashar is generally regarded as a mild-mannered intellectual sort who has made a few limited reforms away from his father’s autocratic policies, but who holds to an equally hard line vis-à-vis Israel. Still, even that may be changing. When Arafat made peace with Israel in 1993, he became persona non grata in Damascus; recently Syria expressed its support for the Saudi peace initiative, one which would ultimately result in the recognition of the State of Israel by the Arab world. Bashar Assad has a difficult road ahead of him in the next few months, and may find himself faced with a choice between war with Israel or civil war against Syria’s Islamic radicals.