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The idea of the Alawites as the ruling group in Syria would have been a surprise to most outside observers until the rise of Hafez al-Assad and his associates in the 1960's and their purge of the "old guard" Ba'athists, culminating in the 1970 coup. "Assad has now remained in power for twenty-two years. Considering that Damascus saw twenty-one changes of government in the twenty-four years preceding his coup, Assad's permanence is impressive. It is still more impressive when one realizes that he belongs to Syria's most-hated ethnic group--the group that has historically been suspected by other Syrians of sympathizing with the French, the Christians, and even the Jews. Daniel Pipes, a Middle East historian, writes in Greater Syria, 'An Alawi ruling Syria is like an untouchable becoming maharajah in India or a Jew becoming tsar in Russia--an unprecedented development shocking to the majority population which had monopolized power for so many centuries.'" http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1993/02/syria-identity-crisis/303860/

Suppose this "shocking" development had never happened, and Syria was instead governed by, say, a predominantly Sunni Ba'athist leadership like that of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Could such a government have lasted? Would there stil be a civil war?
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