Assad trying to carve out rump Alawite state?
Lee Smith argues that Bashar al-Assad has already lost Syria and that he is trying to carve out an ethnic Alawite state along the Mediterranean coast, centered in Latakia.Today, Assad’s forces are stretched impossibly thin. Months ago came the first evidence, as regime troops found that whenever they quelled the uprising in one town, another town rose up. Assad didn’t have enough loyal hands to put the rebellion down everywhere once and for all. The presence of Iranian and Hezbollah troops was further proof that Assad was shorthanded. And now rebel forces are fighting for control of the borders with Turkey and Iraq, while the regime has moved troops from the Golan Heights border to defend Damascus. The mighty Syrian Army is nothing but a sectarian militia defending a shrinking territory.Read the whole thing. I'd be as happy as the next guy to see Bashar go (although I doubt I'm going to be any happier with his likely replacements), but it bears pointing out that one of the problems with countries like Syria, Iraq and Lebanon is that their 'national identities' are a fiction, and given the opportunity they will descend into ethnic tribalism. Is that the direction in which we are heading? Is an Alawite state in part of Syrian a trend setter? If it is, it may not be so bad for Israel. We'd have more enemies but they would be significantly smaller.
As Tony Badran, a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, has documented, the regime seems to be waging a campaign of sectarian cleansing in order to carve out a rump state along the Mediterranean coast, reflecting the geographical contours of the traditional Alawite heartland, with its capital in Latakia. The regime has lost the -hinterland and may be on the verge of losing Damascus, but it is still counting on survival. If Assad can’t have all of Syria, then he and his Russian and Iranian backers will console themselves with an Alawite state on the Mediterranean. The Obama administration should ensure that this doesn’t come to pass.
Labels: Alawite, Bashar al-Assad, Latakia, Syrian uprising, tribalism
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:23 AM
2 Comments:
From a secular rational point of view, while it would be better for the world to not interfere and let the Sunnis and Shia continue to slaughter each other, at the same time the division of Syria (along with Iraq, etc) into ethnic or religious states (Alawite, Druze, Kurdish, etc) where neither the Sunni or Shia are fully in control would in my humble opinion be the best case scenario (however unlikely that is).
Ripping a page out of the EU manual. That is, to disassemble states and revert to the smallest tribal ethnic clan. It never works. Not even the Belgians can make it work.
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