A look in the sectarianism of a “Secular” regime

The Syrian regime has claimed since 1973 to be a “Secular” one, but the truth is it is not. A peak at this regimes officials, army officers, and government employees shows that this regime is 100% sectarian with the Alawite minority in control. The Alawites constitute 11-12% of the population in Syria and yet they hold all the important positions in the state including the army, which makes one wonder is that really a secular regime as it calls itself? I must note that the Alawites have the captured all the joints of the state from the government to the businessmen they all run the state and their fist is spread all over the country.

And just like any militaristic regime in the Middle East, the Syrian one only understands violence as a mean to get what it wants, and we can see that clearly with the way the regime handled the protests in Syria since day one it started killing, massacring, and slaughtering the peaceful protesters who for the first time broke the walls of fear and started practicing their freedom of speech. Yes there is a blood bath going on in Syria but in that blood bath we are also witnessing the birth of freedom, as any birth lots of blood is shed in the delivering process. Now are we going to see any revenge based on religion in Syria mainly targeting the Alawite minority after the revolution succeeds? I wish I could say no and lie, unless the Alawite minority decides to take a stance and support the revolution in Syria, and distance itself from the regime that is killing in their name, then the vengeance scenario is more likely to happen.

The Syrian regime did tolerate religious minorities but at the same time showed zero tolerance to political movements that were against the Ba’athist agenda, and what good is secularism when no democracy exists and vice versa. We must note on the sectarianism of the Syrian regime would be what the Russian foreign minister said that Russia won’t allow a Sunni regime to replace the current one, here we must understand what did Sergey Lavrov mean by Sunni regime, did he mean an extreme Islamic regime like the one in Saudi Arabia or a normal regime that replaces the Alawite one.

But in the end the revolution was born to win and live on, and no matter how much violence the regime uses against the protesters it won’t be able to stop what has started. The people’s movement will win because that’s the only natural result, as for Assad’s future I can only say that his end will be much worse than that of Gaddafi’s and then no one will shed a tear over him.

The Assad crime organization

Many of us have watched the Sopranos or the Godfather and were entertained by them, in Damascus the situation is the same but it’s less entertaining, we see them everyday but instead we call the head of the family there the president or the ophthalmologist. Don’t let that fool you the Assad family is a crime organization in many different aspects and they are no different than the Sopranos or the Corleone families, but for four decades they owned something no typical crime organization has owned before: A state.

Kim Jung Il and Gaddafi are also heads of crime organizations, and they own states too, but their states are not described as stable. Bashar Al-Assad is the second generation to run the family business, coming from an alawite minority the Syrian regime won’t leave easily. Syria produces 400,000 oil barrels per day 28 thousand of that is for exporting this brings to the family  millions of dollars per day, and that is something no crime organization dreamed about. The family itself is considered unstable and we can look back to 1983 when Hafiz Al-Assad suffered a heart attack and left his brother Rifaat in charge, but Rifaat a failed attempted to take power through a coup d’etat which resulted in his exile. Another fracture in the Syrian regime  is when Abdul Halim Khaddam resigned and claimed that the Syrian regime sent threats to Rafiq Al-Hariri who was assassinated in 2005.

Khaddam who was once the most powerful Sunni politician in the Syrian regime has left Syria for exile and now heads the National Salvation Front in Syria from exile, accused the Syrian government of assassinating a top Hezbollah fugitive “for Israels sake.”

The history of the Assad family in crushing any opposition can be traced back to the 1980s when the regime crushed the Muslim Brotherhood in the city of Hama, they did not leave it at that, they also crushed the innocent civilians of the city, and who ever supported or as much as sympathized with the organization was killed or declared missing, the massacre’s casualties who are counted in the thousands and in the tens of thousands are a proof that the regime wouldn’t hesitate for one second to mercilessly crush any opposition but this time it’s not Hama, it’s Daraa.

The current operations in Daraa are the regime’s response to any ideas of change or reforms, and that the regime won’t think twice before killing anyone involved or even uninvolved in the freedom demanding protests.

But no tyrants lasted for ever, even Hitler who has the blood of millions on his hands didn’t survive, Syria will return to be the glory of the Arab world thanks to the 15th of March youth.

Bashar Al-Assad won't last