Last evening on NBC Nightly News, Richard Engel reported
that the Assad regime in Syria is “wobbling.” The network’s chief
foreign correspondent implied that “regular” gun battles close to
the presidential palace suggest “command and control problems” as
the country descends into a full-blown “civil war breaking out
between Sunnis and Shi’ites.”
Granted, Engel was probably hampered by time constraints and
unable to scratch the surface of societal fracture, but it’s
misleading to conjure up a religious conflict between “Sunnis and
Shi’ites” where there isn’t one. Hostilities in Syria are gradually
dissolving into a sectarian clash between Sunnis and Alawites — a
confrontation that’s inescapably political in nature.
So what’s an “Alawite”? Well, a quick wiki search will tell you
that the Alawite sect was born of the schism between Sunni and
Shi’a Islam, rooted in the disagreement over the succession of the
caliphate after the Prophet Muhammad’s death. Much like the titular
“Shi’a” is condensed from “Shi’atu Ali” (literally, “the
followers/faction of Ali”), the name Alawite is derived from Ali,
the cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad, revered by Shi’a and
Alawite, alike.
(Up until rather recently, the Alawites were know as “Nusayri”
[or, Nusairyoon] in recognition of a nominal founder of
the sect, Muhammad ibn Nusayr. This small and mysterious faction
was christened Alawite [instead of Nusayri] by the French early in
the Mandate period [1920-46].)
So why is this important? To quote the Bard, “What’s in a name?”
Well, despite Richard Engel’s pronouncement that tensions in Syria
boil down to a conflict between Shi’a and Sunni, Alawites aren’t
strictly Shi’a. Rather, they’re termed “ghulat,” or
“exaggerators,” and considered extreme in their veneration of
Ali.
The Alawites split from mainstream Shi’a Islam in the
9th century. How come? Well, they consider Ali divine —
as Leon Goldstein
writes in Foreign Affairs, this is a position that
would be considered radical by most Shi’a and downright heretical
by most Sunnis.
But despite outward appearance, the power struggle between Arab
Sunnis and Alawi in present day Syria doesn’t exist upon the fault
line of some ancient religious schism. Rather, the violence is
caused by a struggle over the right to control the substance of
Syrian nationalism. It’s important that we remember this.
The determination of Sunni insurgency is the product of
political provocation decades in the making. The fundamental
dispute between Sunni and Alawi sects is indicative of a
historically decisive conflict. A minority Alawi population
(approximately 2.5 million, or 13% of the population) has ruled
Syria’s Sunni majority (closer to 75% of 20.5 million Syrians
population), and has discriminated against it with all the tools of
political privilege and patronage.
At present, the Alawites enjoy the command of Syrian
intelligence, elite military units, and the shadowy
shabiha (literally, Arabic for “ghosts”) militias that
have reportedly perpetrated the most savage atrocities witnessed,
to date. The Sunni have never enjoyed the opportunity to play a
role proportional to their numbers and have been confined to the
standing of an underprivileged majority. Demoralization breeds
discontent, and political opposition to Assad’s secular (even
socialist) Ba’athism was often nurtured in the mosque.
Despite our tendencies to shrug off sectarian conflict as
distinctly intra-Islamic ethnic hostility, the partition is
political — as it relates to the Sunni majority’s “minority”
standing, Assad’s relationship with Tehran, and the conveyor belt
of terror he provides Shi’a Hizbullah in southern Lebanon.
So where does this leave us?
Well, hopefully not entangled in another bewildering,
post-colonial conflict contested by an anti-American, anti-Israeli
regime complicit in the slaughter of its own people (albeit a
de facto adversary of radical Islam) and a prismatic
opposition that includes members of the Muslim Brotherhood, al
Qaeda in Iraq vets, liberal activists, and renegade officers who
couldn’t stomach the atrocities they were ordered to commit.
For the record, I’d note the conspicuous absence of a number of
groups in this conversation: namely, Assyrian and Maronite
Christians, Greek Orthodox, and the millions of Arab Muslims who
are similarly unenthused by both the regime and opposition.
Consider closely this last point before heeding calls to arm an
opposition we don’t understand against a regime we cannot tolerate
— particularly upon a Levantine fault-line bordering Jordan, Iraq,
Israel, Lebanon, and Turkey.
