New patchwork Syria emerges
Before the Syrian uprising began in 2011 Assalah Shikhani did not think too much about whether her neighbours in the coastal city of Latakia were Sunnis, like her, or members of the Alawite sect – an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam – like the country’s president, Bashar al-assad.
When peaceful demonstrations became a bloody civil war, however, sectarian violence flourished and former friends became enemies. The rebels stemmed from the Sunni majority and the minorities – including Christians and Alawites – flocked to support Assad.
Now, as the war draws towards to a close with the surrender of some of the last rebel redoubts, a new Syria is emerging: a scattering of international zones of influence split along sectarian and ethnic fault lines.
Sectarian divisions were exploited and widened by the warring parties, particularly by the regime, which painted all the rebels as Sunni jihadists and told minorities they would be targeted. Mistrust and hatred now abound between Sunnis and Alawites, and Arabs and Kurds. All sides see the others as dangerous extremists. ‘‘[The Alawites] were my neighbours. But then they burnt our lands and burnt our home in my village,’’ said Shikhani, who now lives in Turkey. ‘‘I don’t think we can live together in the future.’’
Assad, having clung on to power during the days of rebel dominance, has clawed back the country inch by inch with the support of his Russian and Iranian backers – at the cost of an estimated half a million lives.
For at least the past two years there has been a level of acceptance among western officials that Assad will stay. US airstrikes such as the ones that were launched on his military bases this year are designed only to limit his cruelty, not to topple him. America has gone from funding the rebels to encouraging them to capitulate.
Assad now controls all the main urban centres including Aleppo, Syria’s biggest Sunni city. This month fighters in Daraa – cradle of the revolution in southern Syria – laid down their weapons and were taken by bus to Idlib in the northwest.
Sunni fighters and civilians have been routinely transported from regime areas, particularly cities, to sectors in the northwestern countryside that are dominated by hardline Sunni rebel groups.
Assad is also ceding territory. Last week in the northwest the pro-regime town of Fua and the village of Kefraya were finally evacuated after a three-year siege by Sunni fighters of Hayat Tahrir al-sham, an al Qaeda linked group.
‘‘We were a small town where we interacted with our neighbours, but they destroyed everything; 3500 people were killed from our town,’’ said Hassan, 28, an Alawite who was last week on his way to Alawitemajority Latakia after being evacuated from his home in Foua. ‘‘We can’t say that all Sunni are bad. Those were the bad ones.’’
In the northeast the Kurds administer a semi-autonomous region they call Rojava. In the north the Sunnis dominate and, in the case of Afrin province, are controlling a Kurdish-majority region that they took with the help of the Turkish military. In the western cities Assad and his Alawite allies dominate.
The regime has been accused of purposefully engineering demographic change. A decree that came into effect this year allows the assets of some civilians who had fled regime areas to be seized. Thousands of empty homes have been given to proregime fighters. Reports also surfaced last year of government supporters being rehoused in former Sunni-majority towns.
More than 6 million Syrians have fled abroad and many more have been internally displaced. Although there is technically no law banning Sunni civilians from returning home to areas retaken by the regime, many fear they will be imprisoned or persecuted by the infamous Shabiha – armed Alawite-majority gangs – if they do. Young men are at particular risk of forced conscription, torture and imprisonment on ‘‘security grounds’’. – The Times