Analysis: Why Syria’s ruling elite won’t yield easily
Diplomatic pressure could yet persuade Bashar al-Assad to back down. But the Syrian government, long-accustomed to status as a pariah state, may continue to resist change – for reasons that stem from fear as much as greed.
By Philip Wood
This article was originally published on August 9th 2011
Syria's recent stability has been achieved in the teeth of deep potential divisions within society.
Apart from a widening gulf between rich and poor, where government salaries fail to keep pace with the cost of goods, Syria also plays host to a mosaic of different ethnic and religious groups, a feature that sets it apart from other Arab nations such as Libya and Tunisia. In Syria the image of 'Arab' political and ethnic homogeneity is an illusion, a creation of the Arab nationalist Ba'ath movement that ushered in an earlier wave of change in the 1950s. Beneath this façade of unity lies a fractured society, where minority communities have much more to lose by the removal of the status quo.
Chief among these minorities are the Alawites, natives of Syria's north-western coastline. It is from this group that the president, Bashar al-Assad, and much of Syria's military and political leadership is drawn.
In spite of their current power, the lives of the Alawites had been marked out by massive poverty and religious discrimination in the 19th century, until French colonial rule brought them employment in the army and control of their own autonomous region.
The French had justified Alawite autonomy through an appeal to the distinctiveness of their religious beliefs, which set them apart from Syria's Muslims. While Alawites revere the Koran, they also believe that it has a hidden esoteric meaning, which is only known to the elect. They share a number of beliefs with orthodox Christianity, particularly reverence for Christian saints and the cross, and celebrate the presence of God in wine. Most strikingly of all, they also believe in the transmigration of souls and in the divinity of 'Ali, the most famous of Muhammad's Companions.
Though the BBC, and other foreign media, have repeatedly presented the Alawites as a branch of Shia Islam because of this connection to 'Ali, the truth is rather more complex. Alawite religious beliefs were considered offensive to 19th-century Muslims, both Sunni and Shiite. One sheikh even issued a fatwa against them, exhorting Muslims to kill them and seize their property. Even today, where Alawites live alongside Muslims in the capital of Damascus, and even attend prayers in the mosque, voices on the street might tacitly point out that Alawites could not be considered fellow Muslims.
Since the 1960s, the Alawites have successfully used their early connections to the military to retain power, aided by the constant threat of war with Israel. This has meant that Syria in the past decades has been a strange combination of a modern state apparatus controlled by a peripheral tribal group, marked out by distinctive religious beliefs that hark back to the ninth century.
The Assads have parcelled out parts of the state to their relatives, friends and co-religionists. Alawites dominate the army's officer corps, in spite of the mass of Sunni 18-month conscripts. The army's elite mechanised divisions, responsible for the suppression of the protests in Dara’a and elsewhere, are almost exclusively Alawite. Moreover, by the same token, new parts of the economy, especially telecommunications and new Damascus hotels, have been dominated by high-ranking Alawite military officers and their families. Rami Makhlouf, a cousin of the president, who is said to own some 40% of this sector, is only the most outrageous example.
The Assads have continued to rule with the tacit consent of other minority groups, of Shiites, Christians and Druzes. Though these groups do not hold as much power as the Alawites, they fear the effects of a Sunni-dominated republic more than they resent the monopoly that the Alawites hold in government and the military.
Recent cultural changes have only intensified this defence of the status quo by the minorities. There has been a palpable 'desecularisation' of the Syrian countryside in the past decade, as well as parts of Damascus and Aleppo, where more women wear the niqab and where Ramadan is celebrated more publicly. At the same time, television, and the flood of Iraqi refugees into the suburbs of Damascus, has made clear the bloody effects of 'democracy' and the disproportionate toll it takes on religious minorities. These changes go some way to explaining the reluctance of minorities to abandon their support for an Alawite-led status quo, even when the instincts of communities or individuals is in favour of reform and a more flexible style of governance.
The net result of Syria's heterogeneity may be that a democratic urge that seems reasonable to outsiders, and to middle-class Sunnis, is considerably less appealing to those who have more to lose if this democratic experiment goes wrong. Egypt's recent experience of interconfessional violence, which pitted hard-line Salafi Islamists against Coptic Christians, is not particularly comforting in this regard. There remain fears that democratisation could merely present an opportunity to Islamists within Syria, who would not share the ideals of Western-influenced members of the Sunni middle classes.
The fears of the minorities, and the expectation that Syrians will support with their community first and foremost may give the lie to hopes of imminent successful democracy in Syria. The Western countries where party-based democracies have proved successful have all been relatively ethnically and religiously homogenous: voting and party affiliation have tended to revolve around categories that are changeable, and not subject to an individual’s accident of birth. But while citizens of the UK or France might be 'a Conservative' at one election and 'a Liberal' at another, this kind of shift is not a luxury that is open to most Syrians, where social obligations, if not actual beliefs, will force ordinary Syrians to act with their confessional bloc.
For it is through such blocs that they are rewarded or punished en masse. And it is fear of such a punishment that keeps the Alawites so united in their wish to retain control of the state. Even if Bashar did wish to push for reform, it is unlikely that other Alawite elites would want such changes to happen quickly, if at all.
Dr Philip Wood is Director of Studies in History at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge
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