The Syrian Revolution

Amid continuing protests, mounting state repression and escalating pressure from the US and the European powers, there are growing signs that Syria is sliding toward civil war. Already, with thousands of refugees flowing from north-western Syria, from the towns of Jisr ash-Shugoor and Idlib into Turkey the crisis of the Baathist regime is having an increasingly destabilizing impact on the entire Middle East region.

On Friday 6th August, it was reported by numerous news agencies that Syrian security forces killed at least 18 unarmed civilians in attacks on tens of thousands of protesters in the central city of Hama demonstrating against the unjust rule of President Bashar al-Assad on the first Friday of the month of Ramadhan. The latest attack is in line with a six-day assault on the city to crush popular demonstrations which have killed at least 600 civilians in a 700,000 strong population, leading many to fear a repetition of the 1982 Hama massacre where Hafiz al-Assad slaughtered over 40,000 innocent civilians and destroyed the city and its infrastructure.

The US government along with the European leaders rather belatedly condemned the Syrian government's "indiscriminate violence against the Syrian people," (Reuters news 06.08.11); a far cry from the war-mongering mantra employed by the same regimes in respect to oil-rich Libya.

Outside of Hama, hundreds of thousands of people took part in demonstrations around the country after Friday prayers under the slogan “Allah is with us,” to oppose sectarianism and the regime’s bloody crackdown, particularly in Homs, Hama and Deir Zour. The pressure has been greatly ratcheted up with regular demonstrations taking place after the nightly Taraweeh prayers in most cities in Syria, despite the efforts of the government aligned department of religious affairs (Awqaaf) trying to outlaw such prayers under the pretext of lightening the burden due to the hot summer.

Feeling overwhelmed, the regime experimented with rhetoric on reforms while relying on much more familiar iron-fist methods in cracking down, arresting and torturing thousands of men, cutting off water and electricity to the most rebellious areas, and making clear to the population that, with or without emergency rule in place, the price for dissent does not exclude death. To date over 20,000 civilians have been arrested, 2,000 have been confirmed killed and more than 14,000 have fled and sought asylum in Turkey.

Four key pillars sustain the Alawiyy clan

A survey of the headlines would lead many to believe that Syrian President Bashar al Assad will soon be joining Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak in a line of deposed Arab despots. The situation in Syria is serious, but in the view of Stratfor1 (a global team of intelligence professionals), the crisis has not yet risen to a level that would warrant a forecast that the al Assad regime will fall. Their claim is that four key pillars sustain Syria’s minority Alawiyy-Baathist regime:

Power in the hands of the al Assad clan

Alawiyy unity

Alawiyy control over the military-intelligence apparatus

The Baath party’s monopoly on the political system

Though the regime is coming under significant stress, all four of these pillars are still standing. If any one falls, the al Assad regime will have a real existential crisis on its hands. To understand why this is the case, we need to understand how the Alawiyys came to dominate modern Syria.

The rise of the Ala’wiyy (or Nusayriyyah)

The population of the country is estimated to be around 22 million. Roughly, three-quarters of the population are Sunni, including most of the Kurdish minority in the northeast. The Alawiyy, the ruling sect since the 1960s, number around 1.5 million (7% of the population). When combined with the Shia and Christian groupings (such as the Maronites), they comprise 25% of the total population.

The Ala’wiyy sect The Alawiyy power in Syria is about five decades old (starting around the 1960s). The Ala’wiyys are frequently categorised as part of the Shia sect, but they have many things in common with Christians and are often shunned by Sunnis and Shia alike. The Ala’wiyys attract a great deal of controversy in the Islamic world. The Ala’wiyys split from the Ithna Ashari (Twelver) Shia sect in the 9th century under the leadership of Ibn Nusayr, hence them being attributed the name Nusayriyyah. The sect is heretical to the main tenants of Orthodox Islam in both matters of belief (aqeedah) and worship (ibaadah). It rejects the Ahkaam Shariah as espoused in the Qur’an and the Sunnah. It rejects the Adhan - the muslim call to prayer, it rejects daily congregations in the mosque for worship (jamaah), it rejects making pilgrimages to Makkah and the prohibition on consuming Alcohol. Theologically, they believe that the first incarnation of Allah (in human form) was in the being of Imam Ali. They believe in incarnational

theology and that human beings are reincarnated and only Ala’wiyys, with their esoteric knowledge, can hope to escape the cycle. Further details of their deviation from mainstream Islam can be found in the Fatwa (religious verdict) by Sheikh Al Islam, Ibn Taymiyyah, an 18th century Damascene scholar2. As a sect, they were known to be very fractious with each other, historically being divided amongst themselves into rival clans and split geographically between the highlands and the lowlands in Syria.

The French mandate between 1920 and 1946 (after the Sykes-Picot agreement) provided the first critical boost to the Ala’wiyy sect in Syria. The French had spent years trying to legitimise and support the Ala’wiyys against the Khilafah Uthmaniyyah. The French had the Nusayriyyah change their name to Ala’wiyyah to emphasize the sects connection to

Imam Ali and the larger Shia sect. Along with the Druze and Christians, the Ala’wiyys enabled Paris to build a more effective counterweight to the Sunnis in managing the French colonial asset. Under the French, the Ala’wiyys, along with other minorities, for the first time enjoyed subsidies, legal rights and lower taxes than their Sunni counterparts. Most critically, the French allowed Ala’wiyys access into the Syrian military and security apparatus, previously forbidden to them due to their disbelief in Islam under the old Khilafah rules. The seed was planted for an Ala’wiyy led military coup at some point in the future. The birth of the Baath party in 1947 in Syria with its campaign of secularism, socialism and Arab nationalism further strengthened the Ala’wiyy sect and provided the ideal platform and political vehicle to organise and unify around. At the same time, the Baathist ideology caused huge fissures within the Sunni camp, as many opposed its secular, social program, declaring it to be antagonistic to Islamic values and polity (i.e. Kufr). In 1963, Baathist power was cemented through a military coup led by Sunni President Amin al-Hafiz, thereby providing openings for hundreds of Ala’wiyys to fill top-tier military positions due to the Sunni vacuum. In 1966, the Ala’wiyys in the army staged a coup and replaced Amin al-Hafiz with one of their own men (Salah Jadid Al Assad) and for the first time placed Damascus in the hands of the Alawiyyah clan. By the 1970s another military coup amongst the fractious Alawiyyah clan brought general Hafez al Assad, another Ala’wiyy to power who was able to dominate the clan until his ignoble death. Basel al-Assad, the eldest son of Hafez was being groomed to take over the reins of the Ala’wiyy regime, before his premature death in a car crash led to his brother, Dr Bashar being sworn in. Many thought that his political naiveté’s, medical training and Western based education would bring hope for expedited political reforms, lesser sectarianism and greater freedoms for the people. However, despite early promising signs, the current situation and response of the Ala’wiyy regime bears testimony that the current ruling elite cannot be trusted to create a just, non-sectarian nor pluralistic society.

What does the future hold? Unfortunately, many political commentators do not envisage that the Syrian uprising would result in a Ben-Ali style exit for the al-Assad clan, nor a military type coup as seen in Egypt due to the sectarian makeup of the Syrian army and military police. Rather, it seems more likely that an armed confrontation, in the way of a Libyan rebel response may ensue. However, such a response may lead to much blood-shed, the destruction of key military and civilian institutions, and ultimately facilitate Western meddling and interference such as to protect any future threat to the Israeli occupation of the Golan heights, (which some have claimed was gifted to Israel by Hafez al-Assad just prior to his coming to power). Currently, most of the foreign based leaders of the Revolution including the Islamists such as Sheikh Adnan al-Arour and Dr Mahmoud el-Doghim, as well as most of the nationalists have resisted such calls insisting that the demonstrators should remain peaceful. Such leaders hope that the continual haemorrhaging of soldiers, officers, brigadiers and lieutenants from the Syrian army joining the now growing list of defectors, may eventually provide the material and strategic might to topple the regime.

However, with the economic hub of the second largest city, al-Halab (Aleppo) yet to join the street protests in any great number, the regime still has some respite to continue its bloody crackdown against calls for reform. 1. www.stratfor.com 2. http://maktabasalafiya.blogspot.com/2011/07/islamic-ruling-on

nusayrialawialawite.html LCIS Research and Analysis Team August 2011