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Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3157/syria-unified-state
Will Syria Remain a Unified State?
(Gatestone Institute) Harold Rhode - The war in Syria has descended into a sectarian war, primarily between the ruling Alawite minority and the Arab Sunni majority. Is Assad trying to create an Alawite homeland in the traditional Alawite area along the Syrian coast between Lebanon and Turkey? One of the places that the Assad regime has been most violent is against Sunnis living in the traditional Alawite homeland. Assad understands that the trend in the Middle East is towards Islamic Sunni fundamentalism and that, in the long run, it cannot stand up to these forces. In the early 1940s, Suleyman Assad, the grandfather of Syria's present leader, Bashar Assad, and other Alawite leaders wrote to the French government which ruled Syria until 1946, asking the French to let the Alawites have their own state in their homeland along the coast. The Alawite leaders claimed that the Sunnis had never treated the non-Sunnis fairly, and cited as evidence the way the Sunnis were treating the Jews in British-Mandated Palestine.