Was the Syrian Revolution sectarian?

An Alawite-dominated secular regime

The regime itself, however, was not sectarian in the religious sense, if only because of its secular ideology.

The sectarian dimension of the regime could, therefore, be better described as that of an Alawite-dominated secular regime, being held together by loyalties based on regional, tribal and familial links, and by a group feeling based on social cohesion, or 'asabiya. Or more precisely: a group feeling among a restricted number of Alawites from within the Alawite community, but certainly not the Alawite community as a whole. 

In a dictatorship like that in Syria, authoritarianism and repression apply to every inch of the territory under its control, including its rural areas with an Alawite majority. Alawites who are suspected of being against the regime (and there must be many) are generally imprisoned, heavily repressed or killed. 

In Ba'athist history, Alawite opponents of the al-Assad regimes were occasionally in a worse position than Sunni opponents, because Alawites potentially constitute a greater danger from inside the Alawite community.

During the Syrian civil war that started in 2011, Alawite soldiers paid a heavy toll as far as their number of deaths is concerned. As a result of the sectarian polarisation, promoted partly by the regime itself but also by its Islamist and jihadist enemies, many Alawites felt forced to take sides with the regime, for fear of Sunni Arab reprisals. 

Since the composition of the Syrian Arab Army is a reflection of the Syrian population, its conscripts are, by majority, Sunni Arabs, and they have been used by the regime as cannon fodder in the war. The Sunni Arab military were (just as Alawite soldiers and others) forced to suppress the larger part of the revolting Sunni Arab population.

Revolution did not begin as sectarian 

Initially, the Syrian Revolution was hardly influenced by sectarian motivations, if at all. People simply wanted to get rid of the Ba'athist dictatorship, whether or not it was Alawite-dominated. Some of the main motives of the demonstrators were to obtain more freedom, dignity, and to having a better economic future.

There were specific economic factors that helped trigger the revolution, such as the rapid population growth, combined with a lack of jobs for the younger generation, as well as the preceding years of severe drought that led many people to migrate from the impoverished countryside to the slums of the bigger cities.

Additionally, there was the inspiration provided by the initial Arab Spring successes in countries like Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, where its leaders were toppled or eliminated. Without the Arab Spring elsewhere, there might not have been any similar revolution in Syria at all.

The peaceful demonstrators at the beginning of the Syrian Revolution stressed that all Syrians were one and united, one of their slogans being that they were Syrians, rather than members of religious groups like the Alawites, Druze, Isma'ilis and Sunnis or ethnic Kurds.

The fact that the issue of sectarianism hardly played any role in the beginning of the Syrian Revolution, if at all, did not mean, however, that there was no dormant sectarian undercurrent.

Sectarian battle for power within the party

In the period between 1963 and 1970, the struggle for power in Syria was mainly a struggle among the secular military Ba'athists themselves, until one of them, Hafez al-Assad, fully monopolised power, after having eliminated all his rivals.

Sectarianism in the sense of regionalism, tribalism, nepotism and 'asabiya was used and manipulated in the period before 1970, both by Alawite officers, and their main Sunni and Druze opponents. In a way it was a 'sectarian' struggle on a miniature scale within the Ba'ath Party and army, but not on a wider scale within Syrian society as a whole. 

Taking into account the still-existing traditional tendencies in Syrian society, it was not surprising that some Sunni and other non‑Alawite rivals within the secularly-inspired Alawite‑dominated Ba'ath regime were inclined to exploit the theme of sectarianism as a weapon in an effort to undermine or eliminate their Alawite opponents. 

Such anti‑Alawite efforts, however, generally only helped achieving the opposite: those officers who tried to challenge their Alawite opponents were all gradually eliminated themselves, making the position of Alawite officers in power and their mutual loyalty even stronger than before.

During the Syrian Revolution, something similar happened on a much wider scale when the Alawite-dominated regime was challenged from outside the regime, including by Islamist radical forces. In this case it was not internal regime rivals who were involved in the conflict, but there was a direct confrontation between the regime and a wider part of Syrian society.

In the past, secular Ba'athist rule was viewed by parts of the conservative Sunni population as something provocative. Within the Muslim Brotherhood this led to extremism among some of its members. 

In the late 1970s and early 1980s a radical breakaway faction of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, calling themselves the Mujahidin ('Strugglers') and later al-Tala'i' al-Muqatila ('The Fighting Vanguards'), provoked the minoritarian Alawite-dominated Ba'ath regime into a bloody sectarian confrontation by assassinating various prominent, and less-prominent, Alawite people, not necessarily because they were Ba'athists but because they were Alawites.

Turning point

One of the worst incidents occurred in June 1979 at the Aleppo Artillery Academy, when at least 32 cadets were murdered and 54 wounded. The majority of the victims were intentionally targeted because they were Alawites. 

The climax came with the Muslim Brotherhood revolt in Hama in 1982, which was bloodily suppressed by predominantly Alawite commanded troops, taking the lives of some 10-25,000 inhabitants of its mainly Sunni population. It was an irreversible turning point in Syrian history where the issue of sectarianism was concerned.

Nobody wished to see a repetition of such bloody events, which had left deep social scars for generations to come.

Rather, the situation in Syria was relatively quiet on the 'sectarian front' for almost 30 years after the 'Hama massacre'. This did not mean, however, that the issue of sectarianism could not surface once again.

Wishful thinking 

The initially peaceful demonstrations against the regime were so widespread and intense, that one could have had the impression as if the 'Hama massacre' and earlier bloody confrontations had been forgotten. Because confronting a much stronger regime with such a history of reckless violence against any form of opposition, seemed to be reckless as well. 

However, it could also be interpreted as an overdose of hope and wishful thinking of the demonstrators that they could bring down the regime by mass demonstrations, as had happened in Egypt and Tunisia.

But the Syrian dictatorship could have been expected to react completely differently, and for anyone with some in-depth knowledge of the regime, it was not difficult to predict that it was going to be extremely bloody. 

Sectarian excesses

Whatever the case, sectarianism was never a primary cause of the Syrian Revolution. During the subsequent civil war, however, there were various sectarian excesses which undermined the possibilities for reconciliation between the warring parties.

There were various reports about sectarian massacres, sectarian cleansing operations, as well as kidnappings and sexually-motivated violence against Alawites and Christians, and the other way around by Alawites against Sunnis. 

In various cases, the conflicting parties maintained that these were fabrications made up by the opposing parties.

However, even though these reports could not all be corroborated, the fact that many people tended to perceive them as true, was already enough to create widespread sectarian fear, particularly in some mixed areas where different communities had lived closely and peacefully together before the Syrian Revolution. 

Hostile slogans like 'Alawites to the grave and Christians to Beirut' were already circulating at the beginning in 2011, and may also have had an undermining effect, promoting sectarian polaristation in the war, just as virulent anti-Alawite television broadcasts from abroad, like those of Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who in 2013 declared the Alawites or 'Nusayris to be infidels worse than Jews and Christians'. 
 
It should be stressed that, different from the Islamist and jihadist groups, most Syrian military opposition organisations were not sectarian oriented, and they were a majority.

In various regions, however, radical Sunni Islamist military groups got the upper hand during the war, and they, together with the ultra-extremist actions of the Islamic State (Daesh) caused sectarian polarisation to increase even further.

During the heat of the battle for Aleppo in August 2016, the Islamic radical organisation Jabhat Fateh al-Sham named its military attack on the Aleppo Artillery Academy after Captain Ibrahim al-Yusuf (Ghazwat al-Shahid Ibrahim al-Yusuf), who in 1979 had been responsible for the massacre of Alawite cadets there. 

In addition, three local battalions of Islamist radicals, were named after the main other perpetrators of the Aleppo Artillery Academy massacre. It was a clear message that the jihadists intended to intimidate and eliminate, in particular, the Alawite forces of the regime.

The Iran factor

It is important to note that at the beginning of the Syrian Revolution there was no clear sectarian dichotomy in Syrian society as a whole, dividing the country into Alawites, Sunnis and others.

And also, today, there is no such general sectarian dichotomy. Syria has never been ruled by 'the Alawite community', although it has nevertheless been perceived as such by a considerable number of non-Alawites, Sunnis in particular.

Military cooperation on Syrian territory between theocratic Iran and secular Damascus, is also perceived by many Syrians as having a Shiite sectarian dimension. 

The religions of Syrian Alawites and Iranian Twelver Shiites are not the same, however, and the Iranian-Syrian relationship is primarily strategic — certainly as far as the Syrian side is concerned. But intensive cooperation with a theocracy like Iran, may have sectarian religious consequences inside Syria. 

If the secular Syrian national (watani) identity is accepted as having priority over all other identities in the Syrian state, there can be a situation in which all groups can be considered as equal partners, whether they are Arabs, Kurds, Sunnis, Alawites, Christians, Druze and so on. Many Syrians have not accepted this formula yet, even though it might create an opening to bringing peace between them. 

As a result of the war, the development of the Syrian national (watani) identity has become stronger at the expense of the pan-Arab national (qawmi) identity, which was promoted by the Ba'ath Party in the past.

The reemerging strength of some sectarian identities has meant a retrogression of this process, however. Kurdish identity has been strengthened as well, but this is a different case, implying an ethnic, not sectarian conflict.

To conclude, the Syrian Revolution was certainly not sectarian motivated, but sectarianism, being just one of its various components, has had a destructive and undermining effect on it.