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Alawites for Assad

(Foreign Affairs) Leon Goldsmith - Since the 1982 slaughter of the Muslim Brotherhood in Hama, the Alawites have consolidated their control of the country. According to the Syria scholar Radwan Ziadeh, they comprise the vast majority of Syria's roughly 700,000 security and intelligence personnel and military officer core. The Alawites' loyalty to Assad today is hardly assured. Despite popular notions of a rich, privileged Alawite class dominating Syria, the country's current regime provides little tangible benefit to most Alawite citizens. Since the provision of basic services by the first Assad in the 1970s and 1980s, most Alawite villages - with the exception of Qardaha, the home of Assad's tribe, the Kalbiyya - have developed little. Donkeys remain a common form of transport and motor vehicles are scarce. Some Alawites are explicitly breaking ranks. According to Monzer Makhouz, an Alawite member of the opposition Syrian National Council, Alawites are joining protests in the coastal cities of the Alawite territory. And in recent weeks, evidence has emerged of defections of Alawite soldiers and intelligence officers, seemingly from less privileged Alawite tribes.
2012-04-20 00:00:00
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