Tit For Tat Ethnic Cleansing
Alawites Paying Assad's Bill.
The eastern end of the Mediterranean is a patchwork of ethnic and sectarian divisions. This is a crop of a Mike Izady map that first appeared in Lebanon’s Record Drought eleven years ago.
Since there are now 500+ subscribers and another 1700+ who follow this Substack, I suspect the majority of you do not have deep knowledge of the area. What I suggest you look for here are parallels with Iraq, where the Saddam Hussein’s Sunni minority dominated the country’s two thirds Shia majority. There’s good information on this in Barbara F. Walter’s How Civil Wars Start.
Specifics in this case that are not fully covered by the France 24 report include:
Alawites make up 10% of the total population.
Russia’s access to Africa depended on the air base near Latakia.
Russia’s only naval supply station in the Med was at Tartus.
Iran’s Shia government views the Alawites as brothers in arms.
The collapse of the Assad regime was sudden and dramatic.
The France 24 video is a report on the death of 340 Alawite civilians, in response to attacks made by Alawite Assad loyalist militia. There are no doubt men there who will fight to the end, because they know some sort of war crimes reckoning is coming. The dead civilians may be collateral damage, but the way it’s reported makes me think this was either payback for things the Assad regime had done, or it’s a land grab in a specific area.
To be clear, I do not think Russia will regain access to Latakia and Tartus; Turkey is right next door and they are pleased to have Russia constrained to the far side of the Black Sea. The U.S. is imploding, just as the Soviet Union did in the early 1990s, and Erdoğan’s mind is on what will be, not what was.
No matter what the cause, this is NOT what Syria needs right now, nor the rest of the world.