Who seeks to plunge Syria back into chaos?

Attacks against the security forces in the coastal region followed by abuses against civilians belonging to the Alawite minority, tension in the northeast region occupied by the Kurdish militias supported by the Americans despite a recent agreement with Damascus which remained without effect, refusal of the Druzes forces to integrate into the new army against the background of Israeli incursion in the southern region. Druzes, part of which is attempted by an open collaboration with Israel and finally recently exchanges of fire between the Syrian forces and the Lebanese forces on the border between the two countries, the table offered by Syria is not reassuring especially that in internal contradictions are added foreign interference which only aggravates an already complicated situation. Will Syria succeed in avoiding chaos?

The abuses of which have been victims of the hundreds of civilians belonging to the Alaouite minority in the Syrian coastal region unfortunately reminded that the country is far from having exorcised demons of the civil war in which internal and external forces seek to dive Syria.

It all started with attacks on Syrian security forces. These attacks would be the result of former soldiers of the fallen regime of Bashar Al Assad. Recurring information is about the involvement of superior officers who served in the 4th division commanded by the brother of the former dictator Maher Al Assad who took refuge in an unknown place (Iraq or northeast of Syria controlled by the Kurdish militias?)

Alawite minority abuses

The response of the Syrian security forces was not limited to attackers belonging to the army of the Old Regime, it unfortunately gave rise to inadmissible abuses against civilians belonging to the Alaouite minority. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an independent organization, has counted hundreds of civilian victims.

Everything indicates that jihadist groups officially dissolved and integrated into the new Syrian army indulged in these acts of revenge of a confessional proven against innocent civilians. The president of the transition, Ahmed Al Charaa, recognized these slippages, and promised to shed light on these events and to sanction the culprits. An independent commission of inquiry has been installed and it should deliver its report at the end of the month.

The events that have mourned the Syrian coastal region are not isolated but are part of a broader political context in which the confessional minorities are pointed out by the various jihadist groups which are infiltrated within the military and security forces of the new regime.

In the state of opacity that characterizes the country’s political and security situation, it is difficult to determine with accuracy what are the groups who lend themselves to this macabre game. Some gravitate around the Hay’at Tahrir Al Cham organization, others around the Syrian National Army (years) composed of the former free Syrian army (ASL) and Islamist groups linked to Turkey.

The instrumentalization of the question of minorities

But the question of minorities takes on another important dimension which makes it even more complex. The foreign powers that seek to impose their diktat in Syria each bet on one or more minorities as part of the application of the famous colonial currency “Divide to reign”.

The Americans support the Kurds northeast of the country. Russians, Iranians and Iraqi Shiite militias support Alawites and Shiites. The Israelis support the Druzes. Westerners also support Christians by promoting their immigration in particular.

The old Syrian regime used the minority map as part of its power strategy. He notably cultivated the fear of these minorities by waving the scarecrow of an Islamic Republic of the Wahhabi type. Official propaganda was amalgamating between Sunnism and Wahhabism to delegitimize any political challenge in which Sunnis were necessarily the majority insofar as they constitute more than 75% of the country’s population.

But the fact that the Old Regime sought to rely on minorities to establish its despotic and clan power does not mean that these minorities were confused with this regime as illustrated by the first victims of the coup d’etat of Hafed Al Assad in 1970 came from the Alawite minority.

As examples, we can cite the former President of the Syrian Republic Noureddine Al Attassi (1929-1992) died in a French hospital after having served 22 years in prison in the jails of Hafed Al Assad, the former leader of the Bath party, Salah Jedid (1926-1993) died in a hospital in Damascus where he was urgently transferred to his prison cell in which he spent 23 long years and The former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ibrahim Makhous (1925-2013) who died in exile in Algeria.

In the same way that the ASSAD regime did not represent the Alawites even if this family came from them and sought to instrumentalize the denominational factor for clan purposes, the jihadist Sunni groups do not represent the Sunni population more.

The overwhelming majority of Syrian Sunnis has remained attached to a tolerant Islam as illustrated by the harmonious coexistence of the main legal schools present in the country (Malekite, Hanafite and Chafite). It is this Sunni Islam that has historically constituted a solid dam against the invasion of Wahhabi ideology with billions of petrodollars.

The new power in Damascus seems to be aware of the importance of the question of interconfessional coexistence in the context of free and united Syria and also seems aware of the fact that this question constitutes a real Trojan horse in the hands of foreign powers which are currently involved in Syria.

Fatal errors of the new Syrian power

But this same power risks paying the price of political errors committed in the aftermath of the fall of the Al Assad regime if it does not come out in time and does not revise its strategy which has so far shown its serious limits.

The first political error in the new power is to have dissolved the old army and the former police as well as the Baath party. It is also the same “error” that was made in Iraq in the aftermath of the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime even if in the latter case, Iran and its Iraqi allies made it purposely bet on the chaos strategy.

In Syria, the new regime could have been content to get rid of the superior officers involved in the war against the people and keep the old military and police structure. As a comparison, the Iranian revolution, in 1979, did not fall into this error and knew how to keep the old professional army of the chah era by making it style by leaders from the revolution and this is what allowed, no doubt, Iran to hold in its eight -year war against Iraq.

The second error of the new Syrian power is to have agreed to integrate into the new defense and security forces all the old jihadist groups without discrimination, including the foreign jihadist groups which were (and perhaps they are still) in the balance of foreign powers. The new power could have thank these jihadist groups by inviting them to join civil life, with recognition due to their role in the fall of the Old Regime and possibly financial assistance to start their new activities.

In order not to have managed to manage these delicate aspects of the transition, the new Syrian regime is now obliged to face the challenges of reconstruction and governance in the worst conditions.

In addition to the hegemonic inclinations of its Turkish ally, the new power must face several adversaries both whose criminal activities are eating mutually: the soldiers and militiamen of the old regime supported by Iran and its regional vectors (Lebanese Hezbollah and especially the Iraqi Shiite militias), the Kurdish militias supported by the Americans Druzes supported by Israel in the south -east and finally in its own ranks the unruly jihadist groups which are likely to light the fire of the civil war and to play the game of the foreign powers which seek to plunge Syria back into chaos.

Another danger hangs over Syria. This is the fatal prospect of the release of the thousands of prisoners who belonged to the terrorist organization “Islamic State” and which are currently detained in the prisons administered by the Kurdish militias. The latter are only waiting for the signal of their American protectors to release these former terrorists and put them back in the circuit to give a convenient pretext to a foreign military intervention. It is no coincidence that the Democratic Forces of Syria (FDS) control the Kurdish militias have refused to transmit the administration of their prisons to the central government of Damascus.

The attachment of the Syrian people to civil peace

The risk of a civil war in Syria is real but it is not inevitable. It is not too late for Syria to change again and start to undo one after the other the factors of division and discord which threaten national cohesion.

The most powerful factor on which the new Syrian power can count if he wants to get the country out of the dangerous area in which he finds himself is the fact that the Syrian people, beyond their denominational diversity, seems determined to exorcise the demons of civil war, by showing in very beautiful way its attachment to a peaceful coexistence fed by its belonging to a history and a multisecular civilization.

The scenes that we have recently seen in small cities of the Syrian coast where Sunni families have housed Alawite families in danger are today like so many rays of sunshine in a cloudy sky and augur happier in Syria for which it is necessary to pray in this sacred month of Ramadan to find the path of peace and stability in freedom.