CETRI
Ali is Alawite. Originally from Masyaf, he has been living and working in Lebanon for over ten years. When the Assad regime fell on Dec. 8, he panicked. Not due to any affection for a clan that never gave him — nor the majority of Alawites — anything, but because, since he was born, he’s been told that Sunnis want him dead. And like the rest of his community, he is afraid of losing everything and being associated with the former regime.
In the eyes of the Sunni majority, the Alawites have participated for decades, especially during the last one, in repression and massacres. At best, they were silent. So, they are guilty.
For three months, Ali has been convinced that blood will flow in Syria “even more than during the Assad’s reign.” Thursday evening, he burst into my office in a fury and said in a panic, “The civil war has begun!” Perhaps it was exaggerated. But what happened in recent days is much more than a shadow over the new Syrian power.
We do not yet have all the facts. We do not know if any foreign powers — Iran, Turkey, Israel — played any role in these events. We are unsure of the scale of the massacre or its perpetrators. We do not know exactly how much the authorities participated or were overwhelmed by its most radical factions.
But we know that following an insurrection led by pro-Assad armed factions, violent clashes erupted and hundreds of Alawite civilians were massacred. And whatever one may think of the remnants of Assadism and its foreign backers, this last element should take precedence over everything else. If such a massacre had occurred under Bashar’s reign, we would not have had harsh enough words to condemn it. There is no reason to act differently today.
Confessional hatred is the most lethal poison in the region. It has reached new heights in Iraq and Syria over the last decade. One massacres another. Then the other does the same to take revenge. The Syrian revolution achieved the impossible and the unthinkable last December by seizing power without a bloodbath. That was the main legacy and achievement of the new power. And in a few days, it went up in smoke.
All the elements were there for it to explode. On one side, Alawites who have lost everything, rejected from the army and administration and no longer able to benefit from state aid due to the new power’s liberal policies. On the other, radical Sunni factions composed of youths who have only known repression since birth. In between, a disparate and limited power. And across the country, weapons outside the control of the state, with no understanding of what to do with them.
Ahmad al-Sharaa may have fallen into a trap set by forces of the former regime who know better than anyone how to fan community fears of “Alawistan.” The interim Syrian president faced an attempted coup that seems to have been carefully prepared, possibly with Iran’s help, and appears to have been overwhelmed by the most radical factions among his supporters.
He called on his troops to show restraint, promised that anyone “who harms innocent civilians will be judged severely,” and announced the creation of an independent national commission to investigate the events on the Syrian coast. Bashar al-Assad, in Sharaa’s position, would have called for the killing of all the “terrorists” — a term used to designate anyone who refuses to be silent — and would have denied all crimes committed by his men. Ahmad al-Sharaa is not the new Bashar al-Assad. But it was his responsibility to do everything possible to ensure that no more Syrian civilians are massacred. Because the Syrian revolution carries within it hope that extends way beyond itself.
It is easy to write these words when one is not leading a ruined, fragmented country, barely emerging from thirteen years of war and 50 years of bloody dictatorship, also prey to many foreign interferences. The Syrian president is in an untenable situation. The coffers are empty, sanctions have not been lifted, and none of the promised aid has been provided. The country is on the brink of partition and implosion. The Kurdish, Druze, and Alawite minorities, for different reasons and to varying degrees, challenge and fear Damascus’ authority. Israel threatens to invade the south under the pretext of protecting the Druze. Iran is preparing its revenge. Turkey believes it is in conquered territory.
While the internal situation alone would be enough to intimidate the most competent leaders, Syria has become the theater of a geopolitical tug-of-war between the two new empires of the region. And the world is looking elsewhere. Europe in Ukraine, the Arabs in Gaza.
Without help, Ahmad al-Sharaa won’t make it. Three months after taking power, the ex-jihadist remains as fascinating as he is troubling. Those who have met him describe a very intelligent, cultured, confident man. A man with a tortuous path, for whom the thirst for power, much more than loyalty, is the driving force. Neither a democrat nor secular, he wants to make Syria an authoritarian Islamist kingdom. Whatever one thinks of the man and his project, he embodies today the only hope that the country will not fall back into civil war. The only one capable of quelling the insurgents and judging the criminals. At the risk of losing his power and perhaps his life. Or, if he refuses, of burying the Syrian revolution in turn.
