The Alawites who rule Syria constitute 12% of the population. Though they make up the officer corps, still -- there are those pesky non-Alawites among the men to worry about. When "real" Muslims massacred 82 Alawite miltary cadets at a graduation ceremony, as part of an anti-regime, anti-Alawite campaign, Hafez al-Assad surrounded Hama, an Ikhwan center, and told his troops to kill anyone who moved. Twenty thousand were killed.
Qualis pater, talis filius? Not quite. Bashir the son is a most myopic ophthalmologist. He may think that he is safe as long as he lets Sunnis use Syria as a point of entry into Iraq to fight the good fight (and any fight that directs Muslim interest and energies away from the Alawites of Syria, disguised as "Ba'athists," is a good fight), and simultaneously lets Syria be used the other way, as a place through which Iranian weaponry, money, and agents are delivered to Hizballah in Lebanon. In such a way do the Alawites hope, by giving at the office, to stay in power (and to keep those reliable Armenian drivers and other Christians whom they can trust).
But is this true? What if the Israelis inflict a severe defeat -- not merely severe, but one seen as humiliating, to the regime? Then the agitation would begin. Not agitation from the would-be Chalabis -- Ghadry et al, or the false "reformers" like Hafez al-Assad's former aide and Vice-President, the Sunni Muslim Kaddam, now working from the safety of his French pleasure-dome (bought with the loot his years in office permitted him to accumulate, which now allows him to pretend to be a "reformer" when what he really wants is to return to power, this time as Mr. Big). Every Alawite house has a picture of Mary. Every Alawite village is known. Do the Alawites want a bloodbath, or do they want to decide now to retreat into their own Syrian redoubt and no longer do Iran's bidding, or for that matter the bidding of Sunnis, deciding instead to preserve themselves and save their weaponry, for a war within Syria to preserve themselves from the real Muslims?
So far Bashir al-Assad's eagerness to assuage Muslims, both Sunni and Shi'a, outside Syria, appears to have worked. He is still in power. Alawite generals still strut about. But for how long, if their forces are damaged and humiliated by the Israelis? How long did Gamal Abdel Nasser last, after the Six-Day War?
In that vast Pentagon, is there anywhere an office devoted to tracking those potential sources of weakness and internecine warfare, in the camp of Jihad and Islam? For example, is there a special office designed to do nothing but figure out ways to use the peculiar vulnerability of the Alawites for American advantage? For those Alawites must prove to both Sunnis and to Shi'a that they are true Muslims despite their Mary-worship, despite the Syrian government closing on Christmas, despite the Good Friday processions that, incredibly for a supposedly "Muslim" country, actually take place publicly without incident (because the Alawite officers have the army in place to protect those Christian processions from the real Muslims, some of whom have resigned themselves to accepting these things). That office should be dedicated to obtaining not the "friendship" of the Alawites (for god's sake, put that idiotic goal out of your mind) but rather their cooperation, by threatening to encourage others -- Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia -- to use their propaganda machines to harp on this little matter of the Alawite despots who have murdered Sunnis, genuine Muslims, and continue to hold them in thrall. The Alawite rulers may think we would never do this, but that is only because they fail to realize that at this point, if the Alawites behave so as to promote the worst and most violent and most potent of Muslim armed groups, they should not expect their worship of Mary to get them off the hook.
Last year they lost Lebanon as a place to exploit financially. Now they have, in their insensate willingness to fulfill Iranian bidding and thereby to risk everything, have figuratively lost their heads. If they do not come to their senses, Americans, not with help from their "Sunni Arab allies" but rather from Sunni Arabs who have their own reason for cutting Syria's ties with Iran, should make sure that they will be in danger of turning that figurative loss into a literal one -- and not far in the future. Surely they know that. Surely they know what happened to those Alawite military cadets in Homs. Surely they know their local Muslims, and what is just beneath the surface, and what could so easily be made to come out, to the great chagrin of those Alawite officers who would suddenly lose control of their maddened men.
Why risk it? Why risk everything? Hizballah is in trouble. Iran is going to be in bigger trouble. Why should the Alawites of Syria risk all?
If we're REALLY lucky, someone in the Pentagon reads you regularly, Hugh.
They really should have you on the payroll as an advisor, IMHO.
Hugh, I am not really sure what your position is on the Alawites. Surely, from a Western, non-muslim (particularly Christian) point of view we should do all we can to maintain them in power.
Surely if the Sunnis took over, the situation would be a thousand times worse.
As a Christian I have always been impressed with the Christian-Alawite relationship. there does seem to be GENUINE respect for Christians and Christianity in Syria. Also I have noted that since the war in Iraq, an estimated 160,000 Christians have moved to Syria.
This has not seemed to have caused any conflict in Syria, and therefore one can only presume that the Syrians have been reasonably welcoming to the Christians.
Surely this must be UNIQUE in any muslim country.
and surely we should seek to maintain this friendly relationship ?
Hugh, please point out if I am wrong in any of this.
thank you
Isn't Hugh's view on that already contained in his post?
It seems a fair point to me. Handsome is as handsome does. If the Alawites think it politic to make Syria part of a Ho Chi Minh trail connecting Iran to Hizballah then they're no friends to the West.
Hugh,
Thank-you for your brief explaination about the Alawites. Can either you or someone else explain more in detail to me what are the Alawites? Thank-you.
Here you go Big Cat:
Wikipedia: Alawites
I was just raising the question of if there is not something worth PRESRVING in Syria. I believe there is :- CHRISTIANITY.
Just as we need to preserve the Christian presence in Lebannon.
I just do not see how a Sunni takeover of Syria a la the Shia takeover of Iraq (thanks to the US), benefits the US or Israel or anyone except the Jihadis.
I and many other fellow Christians in the UK have this ominous feeling that the US (and the UK) will one day abandon the Christians of Lebannon, the Christians in Syria and the Christians in Iraq.
Wouldn't it be so sadly ironic if the so-called "Christian" US was responsible for the FINAL demise of Christianity in the Middle East!
If push-came-to-shove, I believe the US would choose that outcome. Remember the shameful betrayal of the South Vietnamese.
On the other hand, If push-came-to-shove, I believe that those so-called "Cheese-eating surrender Monkeys" (aka the French) would stay and defend the Christians of Lebannon.
At the moment Iraqi Christians are finding SANCTUARY in Syria.This should be borne in mind.
If the army has to be there to protect Christians, then this Muslim country is no better than the others. Without "protection" the Christians, would no doubt, be attacked.
The Muslim hardliners vow death to all non-Muslims. I predict their hardline rhetoric will not change.
"If the army has to be there to protect Christians, then this Muslim country is no better than the others.."
Is it really the army that is protecting them? Consider this : if ONE single Pakistani Christian in a population of over 130 million gets beaten up - it makes BIG NEWS on this web site!
I have been visiting this site for a long time, yet I cannot recall tales of Christian oppression, persecution, discrimination coming from Syria.
Am I to believe that Hugh and Robert are suppressing this information? No, of course not.
Therefore there MUST be GRASS ROOT respect amongst most ordinary Syrians for Christians.
Remember also that Iraqi Christians are fleeing Iraq for Syria BECAUSE of US policies.
I have the feeling (I hope that I am wrong) that many myopic americans and Israelis are now itching to bomb Damascus (a city with an ancient Christian heritage)...
well I would like to remind them of Nagasaki,(another city with an ancient Christian heritage,much older than America's Christian heritage)in one single day the US practically wiped-out Japanese Christianity. It wasn't the Japanese military machine that suffered, but ordinary, innocent Christians. Such would be the fate of Damascus Christians.
If the West has to deal with Syria , then why dont we use our INTELLIGENCE and consider ways of possibly PARTITIONING the country.
"I and many other fellow Christians in the UK have this ominous feeling that the US (and the UK) will one day abandon the Christians of Lebannon, the Christians in Syria and the Christians in Iraq."
......
"On the other hand, If push-came-to-shove, I believe that those so-called "Cheese-eating surrender Monkeys" (aka the French) would stay and defend the Christians of Lebannon."
-- from a posting above
"Will one day abandon"? What do you think happened during all those years of the Lebanese Civil War? Did Lebanese Christians get any help from the Western world, other than Israel? Did the French help them? No. The French press, and above all Le Monde, was full of stories about not the Christians, but the "right-wing" Christians. A Homeric epithet. The PLO was fine. The Muslims were fine. But it was always those "right-wing" Christians. The French, who long ago had been defenders of the Christians, were no help, and have been no help since. The Americans, who sent Marines in 1958, now sent Marines to help evacuate Arafat and the PLO, so that they could go off to Lebanon and fight another day, and then those Marines stayed, not to help the Christians, but as neutral "peacekeepers," which still did not prevent Hezbollah from blowing up 241 of them.
Of course the Christians of Lebanon were abandoned. And many of them fled to the West, never to return. And Lebanon, the refuge and redoubt of Maronites, who retreated from various places, and found in the mountains of Lebanon (from which they had never left, where they had been before the Arabs arrived bringing Islam as the offer that was not to be refused), a place of refuge, just as so many non-Muslim or non-Arab Muslims in all the lands where Arab Muslims came to dominate, have found in mountainous areas places where they can better defend themselves.
What did the Western world do for the Christians of Biafra? Nothing at all. Not a single European country supported the Christians in what Col. Ojukwu described as a "Jihad" against them, while the Egyptian pilots strafed Ibo villages, and other Muslims made sure that the Muslim north would be victorious. Of course there are Christians and islamochristians, and the latter, if they promote the agenda of Islam, lose the moral right to the support of non-Muslims. But the Maronites were never like that. They deserved support -- from France, from the United States. Israel could do something, but not enough, and clearly, in having to conduct its own battle against Hezbollah, it is helping the Christians in their own future jockeying for position (and also helping all the other Lebanese opposed to Hezbollah), but unfortunately, in attacking Hezbollah, the Israelis also must attack certain targets, including roads and bridges, and even non-Hezbollah villages where Hezbollah has implanted itself, and from which it is shooting missiles, and this for some Lebanese may, understandably but not really justifiably, cause them to ignore, at least temporarily, the good Israel is doing them, and to wish to join the phony chorus of those denouncing Israel -- after all, there is no punishment for doing so, but not doing so may well be punished.
It is not a case of abandonment. The abandonment has already occured, over the past half-century. Instead, what one wishes is for an abandonment of that policy of abandonment. One wishes to push the Western world into reversing its policy of ignoring the malevolence of Islam, the pressures of Islam on all non-Islamic peopoles, and even ignoring the suave assurances of those islamochristians (like the "Palestinian" Christian who is the current mayor of Bethlehem, and who insists, despite all the evidence, that "there is no problem" for the Christians of Bethlehem, "no problem at all") who of course have to lie, in order to curry favor with their Muslim overlords and masters, almost everywhere.
And even some worldly westernized Christians encourage the idea that using or speaking Arabic makes the Christians of the MIddle East into "Arabs" -- that of course is the official Arab line, part of the vast armentarium of the Arab linguistic and cultural imperialism that is so central to Islam. Even such a figure as the late Albert Hourani, author of "A History of the Arab Peoples" (note, in that last word, that curious plural, the desire to claim as "Arabs" all sorts of people who may use Arabic, but never were Arabs, whose ancestors were outside Arabia, long before the Arabs arrived, with islamization naturally accompanied by arabization). Albert Hourani of St. Antony's College, Oxford, where Avi Shlaim unsurprisingly found his haven, and Tariq Ramadan has been given a temporary purchase in England, though he still has his gunsights set on the United States, described by J. B. Kelly to me as akin to a bishop or other cleric out of Browning, a "plump abbot walking about, dispensing his favors among his monks."
Although you would never convince Dennis Ross, or Edward Djerijian, or others at that level of permanent incomprehension, that the Middle East is not only, or even mainly, about the Arab and Muslim war on Israel, others have begun to see that the general problem, of which the Lesser Jihad against Israel is only a specific case, is Islam and its tenets, its attitudes, its duties, its goals. Israel was simply the main game in town for Arabs before the trillions of OPEC dollars made it possible for them to expand their goals, to set their sites not merely on tiny Israel, but on expanding Muslim power everywhere. And since the trillions in oil money could buy everything needed to make the Jihad a truly world-wide effort, could buy arms, fund arms projects, pay for mosques and madrasas for all those millions of Muslims so unthinkingly, negligently, allowed to settle deep within the Lands of the Infidels, pay for propaganda and campaigns of Da'wa carefully targetted at the alienated and the vulneable, pay for academic programs, and chairs, and even whole centers, that would come to dominate the teaching about Islam and the Muslim peoples and polities, and sanitize everything so that generation after generation of the so-called "specialists" and "experts" would be on the receiving end of so much misinformation that unless they were very intelligent, and capable of engaging in their own self-education once they had endured the official Defense of the Faith that the MESA Nostra offerings constituted, they would continue to be unable to see what were the promptings, and the scope, and full menace, of Muslim behavior, of varied instruments of Jihad.
If the West has to deal with Syria , then why dont we use our INTELLIGENCE and consider ways of possibly PARTITIONING the country
You do not deal with Muslims. Partitioning would only generate civil war.
eradicate the Qu'ran and deal death to those who continue to pursue death.
Japan did indeed lose hundreds of thousands all at once,--the result --no Japanese murder since, no Japanese land agression since- no forced sex slaves since- and Japan has become wealthy under excellant government and free trade. Japan is now a valued member of the world.
MUslim countries may need realignment.
Purinuch - I can not bring myself to share you faith in either the willingness or the ability of the French to defend Christianity in the Lebanon. Their government will not even defend their own people in metropolitan France against Islamic thuggery.
Here's some evidence of Syrian solicitude for Christians.
Three hundred Christians were massacred at Damour by the Syrians and their "Palestinian" allies in 1976. Karl Fefer of Der Stern was the only Western correspondent to have written fully on the massacre. He was assassinated as a consequence.
At this time Robert Fisk and others were shilling for Assad in the formerly August pages of the Times of London. That was, of course, a good deal safer: Michel Seurat, a French scholar, also lost his life for telling the truth. Or maybe it just suited the poisonous sensibilities of Fisk to give Assad and the Syrians a leg up. At the time a British scholar noted:
SR,
Thank-you.
Syria is ruled by a completely schitzophrenic regime. Pro-Jihadist in foriegn policy while opposing any form of Islamization internally. We should oppose the former while supporting the latter.
Interestingly, after the fall of the Ottomans, the Alawites demanded an independent Latakia where most of them are concentrated. Had France agreed to this, Syria would be landlocked and the Alawites would not have to appease the Muslims. I agree with Hugh that the Alawites can be co-opted. Unfortunately Bashir Assad is in way over his head as leader of Syria. The is no way he could get away with taking on the Muslim Brotherhood as his father successfully did at Hama.
However, the absolutely worse scenario possible would be the overthrow of the Ba'ath regime. Assad only trusts fellow Alawite and the Christians. In fact, when it comes to domestic policies, Syria is one of the most pro-Christian government in the Middle East. There are several Christian generals in the military and the various Patriarchs of the Christian Churches, both Catholic and Orthodox, sit in the Syrian senate. Sadly, the Syrian policy in Lebanon has been the exact opposite. Again, a completely schitzophrenic policy.
Every effort must be found to replace Assad from within the Ba'ath party and the army with someone who will align Syria's foriegn policy with its Ba'athist domestic ideology. All the so-called "democratic" forces are just fronts for Islamists.
Yojimbo --
Could you tell me, if you know, who wrote those words about Fisk?
Hugh,
That was THEN - this is NOW!
Today, it is the US that is NOW the ARCHITECT of the New Middle East.
I truly believe that this time the French want to get involved because they know that NOW the Christians could be facing extinction in Lebannon if Hizballah succeeds.
As a Christian, I would like to believe that somewhere in US Middle Eastern policy there is an element of seeking to preserve Christianity in its traditional homeland. But I have a fear that the unintended consequence of US policies, will have the opposite effect.
Go to www.france-echos.com or www.les4verites.com and see what is going on in France. Ignore the political connections, if any, of the first website listed, and simply look at what is happening in France. Look at Sarkozy as the great Infidel Hope, and what modest measures he envisages, and how even some of these have already been thwarted.
Years of the steady anti-Maronite and anti-Israel propaganda, and the stifling of the few reporters who understood Islam all too well -- such as Jean Peroncel-Hugoz, who was transferred from covering the Middle East to writing travel articles from the Algarve once his book Le radeau de Mahomet (The Raft of Mohammed) came out, showing he was the Man Who Knew Too Much about Islam, and Eric Rouleau (the anti-Israel voice of philo-Islam for decades, until he became the French Ambassador to Tehran, a nightmare appointment for France, a fitting one for him) made sure that there would be no more of that out of Peroncel-Hugoz.
If the French come to their senses, it is only because Chirac and D. de V. are on their way out, and sensible people are now beginning, far too slowly, to get the picture. It's a race against time in the Lands of the Infidels. Will people see Islam plain, as one suspects even Tony Blair has begun to, or will they delay the day, and the shock, of recognition?
Hugh,
That was Roger Scruton. It was from his book A Land Held Hostage.
Purinuch: I fear that for your suggestions to work, Western powers are going to have to revive their appetite for colonial head-breaking--i.e., no "Hearts and Minds" campaigns in places like Fallujah, but Mongol-style massacres. We're fighting "People's Wars", now, which means that the enemy won't stop until he sees a very real danger that the villages and slums he depends on for support and reinforcement are in danger of becoming the habitations of four-footed rather than human jackals.
My observation Hugh. The Alawites merely want to hold onto power, but like everyone in the land of Islam is held hostage to the fanaticism of the Qur'an, Imam's and Scholars. There is no solution at all to the problem, until the myth of Islam and the Qur'an and the power of the Mullahs and Imam is destroyed.. unfortunately I don't see that happening, because as we all know when a religion or belief is attacked, people entrench and rally around the flag.
Exagerating or creating attacks on religion are a manipulation tool of Jews and Christians, as well as Muslims.
A few months back, I heard on an Arab news service, that there was an alliance in Syria of Christians, various muslims, even the communists around the Muslim Brotherhood. I didn't really believe it, but it was reported on Abu Dhabi TV.
Here is an item that the thoughtful will be interested in, an interview with
I have a lot of problems with his assumptions and opinions but totally agree with him on one thing he said, which is that
Otherwise, this second generation Lebanese American and Christian is very ignorant (as is even Ollie North and the pundits of Fox) of the intrinsic hostility and competiton between Shi'a and Sunni.Yes they will unite temporarily against the infidel, but will when that deed is done, go back to their sectarian squabbles.
We never see anything in the blogosphere or media, about the attempt in 1979 and 1980 by Ayatollah Khomeini to overthrow the Saudis during Hajj.
I would never have known anything about it, except that I have read Sandra Mackey's The Iranians and her The Reckoning, nor would I have understood anything about the Shi'as of Iraq had I not read Yitzakh Nakash "The Shi'is of Iraq".
With a nod to Hugh who told us about the Saudi's shahading 200 French Paratroopers, because their own national guard could not or would not put down an Iranian inspired Hajj rebellion in Iraq.. it took a google search to flesh out the details though.
In the above post where I said "Otherwise, this second generation Lebanese American and Christian is very ignorant (as is even Ollie North and the pundits of Fox) of the intrinsic hostility and competiton between Shi'a and Sunni." The second generation Lebanese American I was referring to was Richard Debs.
“Hugh, I am not really sure what your position is on the Alawites. Surely, from a Western, non-muslim (particularly Christian) point of view we should do all we can to maintain them in power.”
-- from a posting above
The Alawites are useful only because they do not, within Syria, behave as real Muslims would. They make it possible for the Christians within Syria to conduct, in the context of hideous Islam, reasonable lives. They do this purely out of self-interest. They know that they are not regarded as real Muslims, know that the real Muslims would attack them in a minute if the occasion presented itself. The Christians will not, are not only not a threat but -- within Syria -- have a stake in the continuance of the Alawite despotism. But that has not prevented the Alawites, in attempting to shore up their "Muslim" credentials to ward off attacks by Muslims, from taking the side of those, such as Hezbollah and before them, the Muslims in the Muslim-Christian war, in order to promote their own financial and other gain. The so-called "Cedars Revolution" against Syria was opposed by Syria's ally of convenience, Hezbollah. And Syria furthers the interests of what is currently the most menacing and terrifying, because semi-demented -- of Muslim regimes, that of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Within Syria Christians, especially Armenians, have served as the household guard for the Assad family, as drivers for Alawite generals, as domestic staff for Alawite officials... In Iraq, Saddam Hussein did exactly as Hafez al Assad: did in Syria; ffggffg he kept Christians around to serve as drivers, waiters, tasters (watch out for that poison), cooks, and by the way, those same people were inherited by the Americans in the Green Zone, and served often the same functions (and now, naturally, are anxious about what is to come, and some have already left, and more will leave, for the whiff of Islam, without the brutality of Saddam Hussein to hold it in check (Hussein realized that Ba’athism provided a cover for Sunni despotism, and that the political opposition based on Islam would necessarily be based on the majority, Shi’a Islam, which is what worried him the most. He was no Ataturk and it is wrong to blandly identify Saddam Hussein as a “secularist” in that committed mode. During the war with Iran, he appealed constantly to the Islamic past. He was building the largest mosque in the world. He commissioned a Qur’an to be written using his blood. He put a Qur’anic inscription on the flag of “secular” Iraq. In short, his use of Christian staff merely reflected his awareness, similar to that of Hafez al-Assad, that the Christians wre no threat, and were aware that if he went, what followed would necessarily be, from their point of view, much more threatening.
By the way, high American officials s in Iraq have received impressions of that country colored by their encounters with a disproportionate number of Christians whom they encounter, has been harmful for an accurate view of that country. Christians of course are far more friendly to them, far more eager to please (if only in the hope of an eventual visa – you never know), because being eager to please the master is something that these Christians had bred into them from birth, and since they were more advanced and westernized, and not only made up the household staff but also provided a great many of the interpreters used, the American view of Iraq and “Iraqis” was twice skewed. It was skewed among those who made policy in Washington, and who were fooled by Chalabi and Allawi and Makiya – fooled not deliberately, but fooled into thinking that these people were not the unusual, the sports, the utterly remarkable, but rather representative of a large class of Iraqis. And they weren’t. And in Iraq, assorted ambassadors and generals and viceroys from the United States have met, and had their views of what Iraqis are like, of what they can do and be, on the basis of these entirely unrepresentative Christians. In the same way, the generals engaged in training “Iraqi” soldiers and “Iraqi’ police are likely to meet the best officers, the ones least likely to be hostile to the Americans, the very few, but they do exist, who wish to build an “Iraqi” nation-state and in one or two cases, even are willing to offer it their unfeigned loyalty. But these self-selected patriots, willing to work closely with the Americans, are not truly representative. Yet this Potemkin-village Iraq, erected in the minds of Americans not as the result of any plot or planning, but only as a result of the American innocence about the nature of Iraqi society, and especially about the over-representation of Christians in the Green Zone staff and among the interpreters, and the analogous over-representation of the very best and most patriotic, and least Muslim, among those army and police officials who have managed to stick by the Americans, has mislead those American officials, civilian and military, and in misleading them, it has helped them persist in this Light Unto the Muslim Nations folly that they cannot seem to shake off..
do not represent the mass. hence the misidentification of him as a “secularist” when he was very far from being an Ataturk, and emphasized his loyalty as a committed Muslim, beginning with the war against Iran presented always by appeals to the Islamic past, and with that giganitic mosque, that Qur’an calligraphed in ink made from Saddam Hussein’s own blood, and the Qur’anic inscription put on the flag, and any number of other symbolic acts)along with all those Christian interpreters, gave a most skewed view, being far more advanced and westernized and decent, than the primitive Jaish-e-Muhammad supporters or their Sunni equivalents in Iraq. Americans keep being fooled; they think that there are all kinds of Kanan Makiyas and Iyad Allawis and Ambassador Franckes running around. For all I know, they think that Iran is just full of Madame Nafisis, just waiting to take over. Nonsense on stilts.
But back to the main query above. I was not suggesting that we try to unseat the Alawites. I was suggesting, rather, a line of threat that could work. For objectively, the Alawites are now supporting, in Lebanon, Hezbollah, a fanatical Muslim group that, were it to succeed, would wipe out not only Israel as an Infidel state, but also the Christians of Lebanon. That may seem paradoxical, but it is not. The Alawites are not “pro-Chrsistian.” They are “pro-Alawite.” That is a different thing. And the American government need not try to overthrow the Alawites, but merely to appeal to their own sense of self-preservation, and to let them know that their eagerness to curry favor with both Sunni Muslims and Shi’a Muslims, as long as both sets of Muslims are attacking Infidels elsewhere – Americans in Iraq, Israelis (and Lebanese Christians) in Lebanon, and not daring to question Alawite rule within Syria itself. It is a way for the Alawites to deflect Muslim attention from their despotic rule, a rule which sees its main threat as the Sunni Muslims within Syria, and rulers who have not hesitated to massacre large numbers of such Sunni Muslims in the past, and would do so, if they felt threatened, in the future.
The article above was not written as an attack on the Alawites. It was written to offer the best, and as yet apparently unthought-of, way to get the Alawite attention. There are Alawites aside from the lean bullet-headed optometrist Bashir al-Assad. His game of appeasing Iran and doing its bidding in Lebanon, while appeasing the Sunni Muslims by allowing them safe passage into Iraq to fight the Shi’a (and the Americans), is not a matter of deep belief, but of deep belief in his own survival. But what if this support for Hezbollah were to bring, not pan-Arab support, but rather a campaign, subdued at first but steadily increasing, bent on bringing the Alawites to heel by emphasizing, all over the Arab and Muslim world, their non-Muslim status, their status as something like those Ahmadis (Qadianis) who have so much trouble in Pakistan from the real Muslims?
That was what the article was intended to emphasize, to bring to attention. You will not hear, in all the vaporings by assorted "experts" (I heard "Juan" (ne John) Cole today on an NPR program, after his denunciation of Israel and of course the American governemnt for, in Cole's view, trying to prevent Iran's oil from going to China or India (the idea of a market, and of a market price, determining where oil goes is apparently beyond the likes of John -- now "Juan" -- Cole (one wonders if he acquired a Spanish-speakig first name in the days when such helped get jobs, a Hispanic version of Ward Churchill's job-creating "American Indian" heritage), showing that he was eminently fair byu also denouncing Nasrallah as "sanctimonious." Such a mot injuste reminds me of the Englishman during the War who described Hitler as a "rascal." Doesn't quite meet the case, in either case.
You won't hear Edward Djerijian, or "Syrian expert" Joshua Landis discussing how to exploit the Alawite anxieties, using Saudi Arabia as the go-between. Why the Saudis? The Al-Saud have their own fish to fry. Though no doubt most of them would have not the slightest objection to, would be actively pleased by, any war in which Israel and Iran exchanged blows and even wiped each other off the face of the map, they know that is just too much to hope for at this point. And therefore they have to ask themselves: who threatens us more? Is it tiny Israel, which of course has no right to exist, but is not going to attack any country not actively preparing to attack it, or is it big Iran, with those crazed Shi'a whom Sunnis everywhere will come to blows with, indirectly, in Iraq, for they cannot possibly allow the Shi'a to have not only the oil of Iran but also that of Iraq, potentially a bigger producer even, than Saudi Arabia (Ghawar fields declining, Shi'a restless in Al-Hasa, potential gasfields being searched for by TotalFina and Elf in the Rub al-Khali impossible to get out except by building a vulnerable and very long pipeline all the way through Oman -- so many problems, so many headaches). Saudi Arabia may utter condemnations of Israel, but of courese it has everything to fear from Iran and Hezbollah, and nothing to fear from Isarel.
But this has to be understood first by the Americans. And then those Americans have to have a real talk, not a phony one, based on a recognition that Saudi Arabia is not our ally, but our enemy, but nonetheless, we have some things that the Saudis would like us to do. The first is not to keep training, and certainly not to equip, the largely Shi'a forces in Iraq. Here we can be of service. And they want guarantees that we will stop fighting the Sunnis. In fact, if they had their druthers, we would listen to that man in the dock, Saddam Hussein, and now perform a switcheroo and arm the Sunnis. That part we won't do. But we can show some dim recognition of the threat of the Shi'a, including those brought to power by our removal of Saddam Hussein.
And what do we ask in return? Well, remember when the Saudis summoned the Lebanese and the Syrians, like so many satraps, to Taif to sign an agreement which among other things, forced the Maronites to agree to Lebanon being officially called, for the first time, an "Arab state"? They can put in another order today, only this time -- hold the Lebanese. A meeting with Bashir al-Assad. A meeting at which he is shown photogrphs of the interiors of Alawite houses, with the pictures and shrines to Mary clearly shown. He could be told that the Guardians of the Two Noble Sanctuaries are not impressed with the orthodoxy of Alawite beliefs. He could be told that the Alawites, who got their start under the French, those Infidels, as members of the Troupes Speciales, have in the past been targets of the Ikhwan (remember those cadets killed in Homs? Revemeber the reprisal in Hama?), and that it could happen again.
Imagine the scene. Here is Bashir al-Assad, summoned to Riyadh by the Al-Saud. He arrives, expecting confidently that they will do the usual -- offer him a large sum of money if he agrees to be less accommodating to Hezbollah and Iran. Imagine his surprise to be confronted instead with an enraged Saudi royal, mincing no words, offering up these implied death threats to him and to all Alawites. And the beauty of it is, he can't talk about it. He can't complain that the Saudis "have accused us of not really being Muslims." Why not? Because it's true, and even to mention it aloud is to give the Sunnis of Syria ideas, that the future belongs to them, and knives are whetted, coups among the men and lower officers being prepared. Hafez al-Assad would not have made such a mistake, would never have so completely done the bidding of Shi'a Iran, and helping Shi'a of Hezbollah, knowing that his own country is full of Sunni Arabs who do not like him or the Alawites, who do not wish them well.
And behind the Al-Saud, is the American government. For it will finally come to understand -- hey, anyone there at the Pentagon or State Department reading this stuff? You really should. It will make your own work-load that much lighter -- that the Alawites can be persuaded that they may retain their control of Syria, as long as they drop their other role as lackeys to Iran and patrons of Hezbollah.
Otherwise, Saudi and other Sunni Muslim gloves are off, and its takfir time in Damasucs, and in the Sunni Arabic-language press, from London to Lahore and all points in-between. After all, the Saudis don't much care whether the Christians of Lebanon lose their Alawite protectors. The Americans do, but what the Americans are suggesting, and what the Saudis can also suggest, is that Bashir al-Assad is replaceable by a more intelligent and clear-headed Alawi general, one who keeps clearly in mind the elder Assad's interest in self-preservation.
Call me a sentimentalist. Call me a dreamer. But such an attempt at blackmailing the current ruler of the Alawites, of threatening him with the unleashing of a propaganda campaign against the Alawite despotism not because it is despotic, but because it is Alawite, and doing this with the express encouragement of the Americans (whose good-will the Saudis need if, when the Americans leave Iraq, the Sunnis left behind are to have a fighting chance against the far more numerous and, at this point, fanatical Shi'a).
From Sunni Muslim hamza-haunted throats, the throats of the cruelest and most unforgiving of all the Sunnis who regard Shi'a as the contemptible, as their enemies, , the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia, all daggers and dishdashas, spitting out to Bashir al-Assad his new marching orders, making him an offer he had better not refuse while meanwhile, in Washington, the battle cry becomes:
Remember the Alawites!
Remember, that is, that they are -- the Alawites.
Hugh wrote: "The Americans do, but what the Americans are suggesting, and what the Saudis can also suggest, is that Bashir al-Assad is replaceable by a more intelligent and clear-headed Alawi general, one who keeps clearly in mind the elder Assad's interest in self-preservation."
I agree wholeheartedly, except for the Saudi part.
First: there is no way the Saudis would ever do this. The Wahabhi Dictatorship in Saudia is to tied to the Muslim Brotherhood. Second: the US is too dependent on the Saudis in Iraq and the Gulf to even consider putting any kind of pressure on them.
The internal coup that replaces Assad with another Alawite must come from within the ranks of the Syrian establishment itself. Unfortunately (or maybe, in the light of Iraq, fortunately) the US has few dependable assets there. Perhaps the Russians could pull something like this off but never the Americans.
By the way, ten years ago, the ranking army general in Syria was, of all things, a Syrian Maronite (yes, there are a few).
One will haver have reliable friends swhile unreliable friendship is allowed, and in the Arab world it is enough to prove to be less bad then Osama Bin-Laden to be supported by US. Americans need to change the rules of the game, and there is no better country to turn into showcase then Syria. Is Assad better then a civil war between Shia, Sunni and Alawites? Assad should know that US is seriously looking at this question keeping their mind open