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Alawite opposition to the Assad regime had a history dating back to presidency of Hafez al-Assad, and continued during the presidency of Bashar al-Assad until Ba'athist Syria had collapsed in 2024. The Assad family was also Alawite.
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Alawite opposition to the Assad regime had a history dating back to presidency of Hafez al-Assad, and continued during the presidency of Bashar al-Assad until Ba'athist Syria had collapsed in 2024. The Assad family was also Alawite.
After a series of coups, the 1963 Syrian coup d'état helped the Ba'ath Party seize power. Alawite military officers Hafez al-Assad and Salah Jadid took part in the coup. In 1970, Hafez al-Assad launched the Corrective Movement and overthrew fellow Salah Jadid. [1] [2] Alawites were largely poor and rural, and were a marginalized group in Syria until Hafez al-Assad gained power. [2] Robert D. Kaplan claimed that an Alawite ruling Syria was an "unprecedented development shocking to the Sunni-majority population which had monopolized power for so many centuries." [3]
Under Hafez al-Assad, Alawites constituted the majority of Syrian military and political elites. [2] Although the social status of Alawites improved, the living conditions of Alawites remained relatively poor, and the Sunni-Alawite tensions persisted. [2] In 1971, Assad declared himself president of Syria, a position that was constitutionally reserved for Sunnis. In 1973, a new constitution was adopted, removing Islam as the state religion and only mandating that the president be a Muslim, without mentioning a specific sect. [4] In 1974, in order to ease tensions, Musa as-Sadr issued a fatwa recognising Alawites as Muslims. [5]
After the Islamist uprising in Syria, the Assad regime carefully ensured the dominance of Alawites in all factors of the Syrian government. [2] Despite increased Sunni-Alawite tensions, Syria remained stable until the Syrian civil war. [2]
During the Syrian civil war, the Assad regime deployed mostly Alawite soldiers, and also conscripted Alawites. The mass conscriptions disproportionately targeted Alawite regions. The conscriptions resulted in many young Alawite men dying, and caused suffering to the Alawite region along the Syrian coast. There were increased tensions between the Alawite community and the Assad government. [6] [7] Regardless, many Alawites felt as if Assad was the only option, fearing that an opposition victory would lead to mass killings of Alawites, especially after the rise of Sunni Islamism among the opposition. [8] [9] [10] Alawites were described as being "hostage" to the Assad regime. [11] Over 100,000 young Alawite men were killed in combat by 2020. [12] [7] [13] [6]
In 2016, Alawite religious leaders published a statement publicly disassociating the Alawite community from the Assad government. They also called for unity between all Syrians, and referred to Sunnis, Shias, and Alawites as "brothers and sisters". They stated that Alawites existed before the Assad regime "and will exist after it", and that Alawites "should not be associated with the crimes the regime has committed". [11]
Alawites had also opposed Iranian intervention in Syria and complained that Iran was a threat to the Alawite faith due to its Shia conversion campaigns in the Alawite regions with tacit approval of the Assad government. [14]
The Assad regime faced increasing opposition from the Alawite community as the Syrian civil war progressed. [15]
The Assad regime had attempted to supplant the Alawite religious identity. Bashar al-Assad attempted to integrate Alawites into Sunni Islam as to alleviate Sunni opposition to his rule, while Hafez al-Assad entirely dismissed the Alawite faith as simply Twelver Shi'ism. Alawites insisted that they were a distinct Islamic sect, while accusing Hafez al-Assad and Bashar al-Assad of undermining the Alawite faith throughout their rule. [16] [17] [17] [11] Syrian school textbooks in the Assad regime did not mention the Alawite faith. [18]
After the 2024 Homs offensive led by Tahrir al-Sham, many Alawites expressed relief as they were not targeted by HTS. [8] Ahmed al-Sharaa assured minorities of safety during the 2024 Syrian opposition offensives. [19] [20] After the Assad family hometown of Qardaha was captured by the opposition, HTS met with Alawite religious elders of the town and received their support. [21] Bashar al-Assad was accused of fearmongering the Alawites into supporting him, otherwise he would have been unpopular among Alawites. [19]
Hafez al-Assad was a Syrian politician and military officer who served as the 18th president of Syria from 1971 until his death in 2000. He had previously served as prime minister of Syria from 1970 to 1971 as well as regional secretary of the regional command of the Syrian regional branch of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party and secretary general of the National Command of the Ba'ath Party from 1970 to 2000. Hafez al-Assad was a key participant in the 1963 Syrian coup d'état, which brought the Syrian regional branch of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party to power in the country, a power that lasted until the fall of the regime in 2024, then led by his son Bashar.
The Alawite State, initially named the Territory of the Alawites, after the locally-dominant Alawites from its inception until its integration to the Syrian Federation in 1922, was a French mandate territory on the coast of present-day Syria after World War I. The French Mandate from the League of Nations lasted from 1920 to 1946.
Bashar al-Assad is a Syrian politician, military officer, and dictator who served as the 19th president of Syria from 2000 until his government was overthrown by Syrian rebels in December 2024. As president, Assad was the commander-in-chief of the Syrian Armed Forces and as well as the secretary-general of the Central Command of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party. He is the son of Hafez al-Assad, who previously ruled Syria from 1971 until his death in 2000.
Alawites are an Arab esoteric religious group who live primarily in the Levant region in West Asia and follow Alawism, an esoteric sect of Islam that splintered from early Shia as a ghulat branch during the ninth century. Alawites venerate Ali ibn Abi Talib, the "first Imam" in the Twelver school, as the physical manifestation of God. The group was founded by Ibn Nusayr during the 9th century. Ibn Nusayr was a disciple of the tenth Twelver Imam, Ali al-Hadi, and of the eleventh Twelver Imam, Hasan al-Askari. For this reason, Alawites are also called Nusayris.
The Hama massacre occurred in February 1982 when the Syrian Arab Army and the Defense Companies paramilitary force, under the orders of President Hafez al-Assad, besieged the town of Hama for 27 days in order to quell an uprising by the Muslim Brotherhood against the Ba'athist government. The campaign that had begun in 1976 by Sunni Muslim groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood, was brutally crushed in an anti-Sunni massacre at Hama, carried out by the Syrian Arab Army and Alawite militias under the command of Major General Rifaat al-Assad.
Rifaat Ali al-Assad, known as the "Butcher of Hama", is a Syrian former military officer and politician. He is the younger brother of the late President of Syria, Hafez al-Assad, and Jamil al-Assad, and the uncle of the former President Bashar al-Assad. He was the commanding officer of the ground operations of the 1982 Hama massacre ordered by his brother.
Jamil al-Assad was a younger brother of the late Syrian president Hafez al-Assad, and the uncle of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. He served in the Parliament of Syria, called the majlis ash-sha'b from 1971 until his death. He was also commander of a minor militia.
The constitution of the Syrian Arab Republic guarantees freedom of religion. Syria has had two constitutions: one passed in 1973, and one in 2012 through the 2012 Syrian constitutional referendum. Opposition groups rejected the referendum; claiming that the vote was rigged.
The Assad family ruled Syria from 1971, when Hafez al-Assad became president under the Ba'ath Party following the 1970 coup, until Bashar al-Assad was ousted on December 8, 2024. Bashar succeeded his father, Hafez al-Assad, after Hafez's death in 2000.
The Corrective Movement, also referred to as the Corrective Revolution or the 1970 coup, was a bloodless military coup d'état led by General Hafez al-Assad on 13 November 1970 in Syria. Assad promised to sustain and improve the "nationalist socialist line" of the state and the Ba'ath party. The Ba'ath party adopted an ideological revision, absolving itself of Salah Jadid's doctrine of exporting revolutions. The new doctrine placed emphasis on defeating Israel, by developing the Syrian military with the support of the Soviet Union.
The Islamist uprising in Syria comprised a series of protests, assassinations, bombings, and armed revolts led by Sunni Islamists, mainly members of the Fighting Vanguard and, after 1979, the Muslim Brotherhood, from 1976 until 1982. The uprising aimed to establish an Islamic republic in Syria by overthrowing the neo-Ba'athist government, in what has been described by Ba'ath Party as a "long campaign of terror".
The Aleppo Artillery School massacre was a sectarian massacre of Syrian Army cadets on 16 June 1979. It was carried out by a handful of members of the Muslim Brotherhood's Fighting Vanguard led by Adnan Uqlah and Ibrahim al-Youssef, without the permission of the leader of the Fighting Vanguard, Hisham Jumbaz. The Muslim Brotherhood in Syria later tried to cover up their involvement in the massacre by condemning it, but the Syrian government decided to conduct a large-scale crackdown against it to prevent any reoccurrence.
The Syrian Civil War is an intensely sectarian war. However, the initial phases of the uprising in 2011 featured a broad, cross-sectarian opposition to the rule of Bashar al-Assad, reflecting a collective desire for political reform and social justice, transcending ethnic and religious divisions. Over time, the civil war has largely transformed into a conflict between ruling minority Alawite government and allied Shi'a governments such as Iran; pitted against the country's Sunni Muslim majority who are aligned with the Syrian opposition and its Turkish and Persian Gulf state backers. Sunni Muslims made up the majority of the former Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and many held high administrative positions, while Alawites and members of almost every minority were also been active on the rebel side.
The Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party – Syria Region, officially the Syrian Regional Branch, was a neo-Ba'athist organisation founded on 7 April 1947 by Michel Aflaq, Salah al-Din al-Bitar and followers of Zaki al-Arsuzi. The party ruled Syria from the 1963 Syrian coup d'état, which brought the Ba'athists to power, until 8 December 2024, when Bashar al-Assad fled Damascus in the face of a rebel offensive during the Syrian Civil War. The party suspended all activities on 11 December 2024 until further notice.
Neo-Ba'athism is a far-left variant of Ba'athism that was formed as a result of the 1966 Syrian coup d'état led by Salah Jadid and Hafez al-Assad, which moved the Syrian Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party into a militarist organization that became independent of the National Command of the original Ba'ath Party. Neo-Ba'athism has been described as a divergence from Ba'athism proper that had gone beyond its pan-Arabist ideological basis by stressing the precedent of the military and purging the classical Ba'athist leadership of the old guard, including Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din al-Bitar. The Neo-Ba'athist regime, which espoused radical left ideologies such as Marxism, abandoned Pan-Arabism, and sought to strengthen ties with the Soviet Union, came into conflict with Arab nationalists such as Nasserists and the Iraqi Ba'athists, particularly Saddamists, with whom they maintained a bitter rivalry. From their seizure of power in the Syrian Arab Republic as a result of the 1963 Syrian coup d'état, neo-Ba'athist officers purged traditional civilian elites to establish a military dictatorship operating in totalitarian lines.
The Kalbiyya, or Kalbi or Kelbi tribe is one of four tribes, or tribal confederations, of the Alawite community in Syria. Appearing in historical sources from the 16th century, the Kalbiyya came to prominence when Hafez al-Assad, the son of a Kalbiyya tribal leader, seized power in Syria in a coup in 1970. Assad ruled Syria as dictator for 30 years and ensured that power was concentrated in the hands of members of the Kalbiyya tribe, a policy which his son, Bashar Al-Assad, continued after he became president in 2000. The Kalbiyya population mainly live in the Latakia Governorate in north west Syria.
Ali Haydar, known as the "Father of the Syrian Special Forces", was a Syrian military officer who was the commander of the Syrian Special Forces for 26 years. He was a close confidant to President Hafez al-Assad and one of the members of Assad's inner circle. Born in the village of Hallet Ara, Haydar was a member of the Ba'ath Party from his youth. He was commissioned into the Syrian Army in 1952 after a stint studying at the Homs Military Academy. After the Ba'ath Party seized power in a 1963 coup d'état, Haydar was put in charge of Syria's special forces and supported al-Assad in his rise to the presidency. During this time he was deployed to Lebanon during their civil war. Haydar opposed the 1984 coup d'état attempt led by Rifaat al-Assad, instead remaining loyal to Hafez al-Assad. After suffering an aneurysm and leaving his post in 1988, he returned to lead the special forces again in the early 1990s. At the time a Major General, he was formally removed from his position and then imprisoned in August 1994, though he was treated well during his brief prison stay and was released without a trial or public humiliation. Haydar died in Latakia at the age of 90.
Salim Hatum was a Syrian military officer and politician who played a significant role in Syrian politics in the 1960s. A member of the Syrian Regional Branch of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, he was instrumental in the 1966 Syrian coup d'état that toppled the government of Amin al-Hafiz, also a Ba'athist. That same year he launched an insurrection from his home region of Jabal al-Druze against his colleagues who formed the new government but sidelined him from any major position. He fled Syria amid a warrant for his arrest, but returned in 1967 and was subsequently jailed and executed.
This article details the history of the Syrian Regional Branch of the Ba'ath Party.
Ali al-Assad was a Syrian farmer and tribal leader who was respectively the father and grandfather of Syrian Presidents Hafez al-Assad, in power from 1971 to 2000, and Bashar al-Assad, in power from 2000 to 2024.
The state – even "Assadism" – supplanted the Alawite religion as the focus of their identity...To be accepted as leader, Assad had to persuade Sunnis and Alawites alike that Alawites were, in fact, mainstream Muslims... Alawites struck a bargain; they lost their independence and had to accept the myth that they were "good Muslims".. Assadism then filled the gap left by the negation of traditional Alawite identity. The loss of the traditional role of community leaders fragmented Alawites, preventing them from establishing unified positions and from engaging as a community with other Syrian sects – reinforcing sectarian fears and distrust.