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Bashar al-Assad's regime has been fostering fears of a religious divide in order to undermine protesters
The role of sectarianism in Syrian politics and the position in the power structure of the Alawi community – a minority sect in Islam thought to comprise approximately 12% of the population – have been off limits as a subject in public discourse until the recent crisis. This prohibition has been abandoned by the regime which is now raising the threat of sectarianism in official media narratives about armed gangs, Salafi militants and foreign conspiracies against Syrian national unity.
In response the opposition, human rights activists and local observers accuse the security forces of themselves sowing the seeds of sectarianism. According to independent reports, in coastal cities and villages where members of both Alawi and Sunni communities live, patrols of unidentified men have visited residents belonging to either group to warn them of impending sectarian attacks and to mobilise them against the other group. Similar attempts at stirring conflict on a sectarian basis are reported by residents in Barzeh al-Balad, a Damascus suburb. There, it is believed, security personnel spread rumours that Sunni residents were planning attacks on their Alawi neighbours.
An undercurrent of the regime's rhetoric has been the fragility of Syria's social fabric, and the possibility that Syrians as a people could retrench to their narrow religious and ethnic identities. By manipulating Syrians' concerns about national unity, the regime is trying to counter the opposition.
Bashar al-Assad's regime is often referred to in the west as an Alawi-minority rule, with the implication that the Alawis as a religious group govern, or that the regime is dominated by Alawis serving their own interests. In fact the Alawis neither rule nor benefit, as a group, from the regime. Like most of Syrian society, Alawis remain economically disadvantaged – many living in villages that suffer high unemployment; and many Alawis were dissidents and political prisoners under Assad's predecessor, President Hafez al-Assad. At present several Alawi writers and thinkers are at the forefront of Syria's campaign for progressive change.
Yet the regime has bolstered its support in the military and security services by filling key posts with people from trusted Alawi families. Assad's younger brother heads the army's fourth division and the republican guards; his brother-in-law is deputy-chief of the Syrian army; and his cousins hold strategic positions in the apparatuses of coercion. However, there are rumours of internal dissent within the family and the clan.
The Hafez Al-Assad regime was founded on a historical alliance between the merchant class, the Sunni official clergy and the military in power. The nature of this alliance has changed with the economic liberalisation of the last two decades, and today the regime is made up of a group of cronies or associates who have become its beneficiaries, not unlike the situation that prevailed in Egypt. These beneficiaries made good in a market economy tailored to their interests. They comprise the children of the political elite, a part of the merchant class and several entrepreneurs. It could thus be said that the regime has no Alawi identity – the beneficiaries come from all sects – although the mechanism of coercion has a sectarian element.
State-controlled media representations of the protests across the country are in sharp contrast to the people's perspective: their slogans and banners refute sectarianism and insist on national unity. A recurrent chant is "One, one, one – the Syrian people are one". But the regime has been insistent that there is a sectarian plot, hoping to establish a sense of unease and uncertainty among ordinary people in order to stop them joining the movement for greater political openness.
This unease is particularly felt by Alawis, to whom the regime has presented itself as a protector. The security approach is hinged on a strategy that holds minorities hostage, raising the spectre of sectarian aggression to cow protesters into compliance and justify the use of violence against demonstrations.
This strategy may not hold for much longer. The danger remains that the regime, in its desperation to hold on to power, will seek to turn its warnings of sectarian conflict into reality. But it is more likely to be faced with a general uprising that cannot be contained by deploying yet more violence.