by ZENOBIE
SOURCE/Flickr
A senior Sunni army officer explains how Bashar al-Assad uses the Alawite minority in Syria to control his authoritarian regime. He has few hopes that the demonstrations will succeed in bringing change
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“The Syrian army is the army of the Syrian security services”, said Muhammad (1), a senior Sunni Muslim army officer. To understand how this happened, you have to go back to the 1960s, when the current political structure was created during four coups. The Alawite minority came to political power and the army dominated the Ba’ath Party. When Hafez al-Assad (father of Bashar) seized power in 1970 in the last coup, he finalised this authoritarian system, tightly weaving Syrian society around the army, the security services, the party and the administration. The regime also used family, clan, regional and sectarian loyalties to form a clientele, who were rewarded with civil service jobs. The combination of religious connections and an obsession with security allowed the Alawites to dominate the army and security services.
Fear is the cement of the security edifice, and it is this that the current revolt (2) has swept away. Under Bashar al-Assad, in power since 2000, the party, administration and army have all come under the direct control of the security services, which are in the hands of the Assad family. Syrians consider the Ba’ath Party as the fifth organ of the security services (3).
I asked Muhammad how many men there were in the army and the security services. He told me there were more than 700,000 — 400,000 in the regular army, 100,000 in the police and intelligence, and tens of thousands employed part-time by the security services. These form the battalions of the shabbiha (4) and the irregular forces. The shabbiha are made up of people from the countryside, and probably criminals freed at the start of the revolt. An estimated 100,000 Alawites work in the security services; tens of thousands more serve in the army and the presidential guard, which is completely Alawite. In 2011 Alawites were 10% of the population. About 50% of civil servants work for the security apparatus; the ministry of defence employs more than 60,000 civilians (in particular in the Military Housing Establishment, run by Assad’s cousin). They lose their jobs if they do not assist in state repression. “These are the men you often see standing outside mosques with electric batons or iron bars. They are also called on to take part in pro-government demonstrations.”
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