There were two scenes from Syria last night screened by the BBC and Channel 4 News that should give the Panglossian optimists hailing the birth of a ‘new Syria’ a pause for thought.
In one, filmed at the Assad family mausoleum in Qardaha, near the port of Latakia, armed members of the Islamist HTS who now control most of the country were joyfully burning the coffins of Hafez al-Assad, the ruthless dictator who ruled Syria from 1970 until his death in 2000, and that of his elder son and heir apparent Bassil, whose death in a car crash in 1994 opened the way for the second Assad son Bashar’s rise to power.
Assurances that HTS has turned over a new leaf should be taken with a healthy pinch of salt
In the second scene, filmed in Damascus, the BBC’s veteran Middle East correspondent, Jeremy Bowen, seemed to smile as he rushed along the street with a baying mob to witness the lynching of a notorious Assad regime henchman and killer. As it turned out, the mob were disappointed, and for unexplained reasons, the expected public execution did not take place, but the crowd’s blood lust was chilling.
Although the cremation of the Assads’ long-dead corpses may not compare with what would have been their fate had they still been alive, the posthumous incineration and the behaviour of the vengeful Damascus mob gives a rather more realistic foretaste of what may lie in store for Syria’s many non-Sunni minorities than the bland, reassuring blather that has been broadcast and printed over the last few days.
Syria, as those viewing the joyful scenes of liberation in Damascus on TV may not fully appreciate, is not a unified state populated by a single people understandably delighted to be rid of the hideous Assad regime. It is, rather, a tattered patchwork quilt made up of many different faiths, sects and factions, with a long history of bloody internecine feuding. It is optimism of the most purblind and wilful kind to fondly imagine that such long-stored hatreds are suddenly going to melt away now, giving way to a shiny and peaceful new Syria.
Though the Sunnis, from whom HTS draws its strength, are a numerical majority comprising around 75 per cent of Syria’s pre-war 23 million total population, alongside them are the other 25 per cent, made up of Shi’ite Muslims, Kurds, Christians, Druze, Ismailis and Armenians – and, most vulnerable of all to HTS vengeance – the Alawite sect to which the Assads and the key players in their regime belonged.
The Alawites arose from the Shi’ite Islam tradition in the 9th century in present day Iraq. Continually persecuted by orthodox Muslims, they migrated to Syria and settled on the north-west coast where most still live around the ports of Latakia and Tartus.
Because of their history of persecution, the Alawites have traditionally kept details of their theology hidden from outsiders, but it is no secret that it shares elements of Christianity as well as aspects frowned on by Islam, such as the use of wine in religious rituals, and belief in reincarnation and a Trinity. For such variations, mainstream Muslims regard them as heretics and have violently repressed them.
Before the civil war, the Alawites numbered about two and a half million, or around 11 per cent of Syria’s people, but around 150,000 of them are thought to have died in the war, many fighting in defence of the Assad regime which had favoured them ever since Hafez al-Assad took control of the country.
The Alawites, though, are by no means a united force. Traditionally dwelling in isolated, inward-looking villages, they are divided into clans such as the Assads’ own Kalbiyya tribe, and during recent years Alawite intellectuals and influencers have daringly criticised Bashar and his British-born Sunni wife Asma online for their divisive and dictatorial policies.
In such a weakened state, and widely seen by other Syrians as the mainstay of the hated fallen regime, it is little wonder that large numbers of the Alawites are already fleeing from their homeland to Lebanon to seek safety with their Shi’ite allies.
Other minorities too are also unlikely to welcome the arrival of the gun-toting bearded HTS Islamists in power with unrestrained joy. The Kurds, who control large swathes of northern Syria, are already reported to be battling the Turkish backed HTS, and Christians will recall the fate of their co-religionists in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East where centuries old Christian communities have been wiped out by Islamist fanatics.
This is the background against which the interviews that besuited HTS PR spokesmen give to Channel 4 should be seen. Their assurances that an organisation affiliated with al Qaeda and Isis as recently as 2016 has turned over a new leaf and is now ready to embrace moderation and tolerance of rival faiths should surely be taken with a healthy pinch of salt.
Although bien pensant western liberals are yet again hoping against hope that the Islamist leopard has sloughed off its spots after failing to do so in Afghanistan, Egypt, Algeria, Iraq, and Libya, and that a new squeaky clean Syria is struggling to be born, history suggests that we will soon be seeing more of the bloody same.
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