Moscow can search to protect its most vital belongings in Syria by cooperation with an Alawite autonomous zone—if that group strikes shortly to determine one.
The beautiful downfall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad leaves not merely a vacuum of energy in that nation however an almost limitless record of unanswered questions. One of the crucial important issues the destiny and way forward for the minority Alawite group, from which Assad and his internal circle hailed. The Assad dictatorship started when Bashar’s father, Hafez, seized management of the nation in 1970. The federal government that Bashar inherited upon his father’s demise in 2000 was nominally Baathist, a socialist and pan-Arab ideology, however the coronary heart of the regime has at all times been—and, extra vital, perceived as—a communal Alawite mission on the expense of the Syrian Sunni majority. What occurs to that group now will say a terrific deal about whether or not post-Assad Syria coheres right into a steady, pluralistic nation—or descends into additional sectarian chaos.
Alawism is an offshoot of Shiite Islam, however the religion has been thought of heretical virtually unanimously by each Sunni and Shiite clerical authorities because it emerged within the ninth century. The Alawites accordingly grew to become an insular, tightly knit, and sometimes secretive group struggling to outlive of their northeastern Syrian coastal and mountain homelands. Throughout French colonial rule following World Battle I, Paris toyed with creating an impartial Alawite state in jap Syria, simply north of the realm that may turn out to be Lebanon, however the mission failed.
Nonetheless, Alawites grew to become one thing of a well-liked minority beneath the French. They had been strongly inspired to hitch, and closely promoted inside, the growing Syrian navy. In 1970, Hafez al-Assad, an air-force common, seized energy and imposed the extremely repressive political system that lasted till this weekend.
The Assad dictatorship didn’t rely solely on Alawite assist. Many Syrian minority teams, together with Christians, Druze, and Jews, genuinely got here to view Assad as a defender of communal minorities. The truth that even Alawites declined to battle for him over the previous week means that this rationalization of assist has lastly crumbled.
Nonetheless, Alawites are absolutely petrified of a future with out the regime that purported to guard them. The coalition poised to take over the nation is led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a Sunni Islamist group that was as soon as an affiliate of ISIS and, later, al-Qaeda. It is a nightmarish situation for a group that has lengthy been thought to be heretics and apostates by even “reasonable” radical Muslim fundamentalists. HTS claims to have moderated, and its chief, Abu Mohammad al-Julani, has promised to be tolerant of Shiites, Christians, Druze, and Alawites. However skepticism is inevitable.
One puzzling facet of Assad’s downfall is the truth that he didn’t even attempt to retreat to an Alawite redoubt in northeastern Syria. He nonetheless retained important elite navy forces in and round Damascus which can be deeply implicated within the regime’s file of atrocities and, in lots of instances, have every thing to worry from a Sunni Islamist new order. These teams even have an curiosity in defending and controlling their remaining constituencies, and preserving as a lot of their authentic and illicit enterprise actions as doable. They might have misplaced their chief, in different phrases, however they haven’t misplaced their incentive to determine self-controlled territory.
Even with Assad out of the image, the brand new coalition won’t be capable of cease the additional fragmentation of Syria. There may be already a Kurdish self-ruled space within the north. HTS and its Turkish-backed allies burst out of Idlib Province, in Syria’s northwest, the place they’d been quietly sustaining an Islamist statelet of their very own. Israel is shifting shortly to manage a zone of affect across the occupied Golan Heights, which it purports to have annexed. Except Syria can shortly unify round a consensus authorities blessed, however not dominated, by HTS and Turkey, and that doesn’t threaten non secular minorities, the Alawite group and remnants of the previous regime may effectively search to determine their very own de facto regional autonomous zone.
Probably the most believable central location is the coastal city of Tartus. It has an awesome 80 p.c Alawite majority. The encompassing inhabitants can also be primarily Alawite, and most others are Christians. Equally vital, Russia—the Assad regime’s most vital backer—maintains its all-important warm-water naval port in Tartus, an asset that Russian leaders have prioritized for hundreds of years and could be loath to lose now. The port is essential for Russian provide strains into Africa, amongst different vital features. Russia has additionally been working to rebuild a former Soviet submarine base close by. A continued Russian presence in western Syria would even be leveraged to keep up current alerts intelligence facilities.
Even when Moscow can not preserve energy and affect in Damascus, it will probably search to protect its most vital belongings in Syria by cooperation with an Alawite autonomous zone, if that group and remnants of the previous regime transfer shortly to determine one. It could be an ironic echo of the failed French Alawite-state mission of the Twenties. Largely due to their very own disunity, the Alawites by no means acquired their impartial state. However beneath the Assads, they led a coalition that dominated Syria for greater than half a century. They may quickly try and return to the de facto independence inside Syria that they as soon as inadvertently exchanged for management over all the nation. What is evident is that the lengthy period of Alawite dominance in Syria is lastly over.