Former Syrian President Bashar Assad was reportedly turned down after asking Russian President Vladimir Putin to help establish an Alawite statelet along Syria’s coast.
Russia rejected the proposal, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, because it saw it as a project to divide Syria. The possibility of the establishment of a coastal Alawite state had been floated by some analysts and Russian military bloggers, but SOHR is the first mainstream report on the prospect.
Syria is majority Sunni, but for the past 54 years, has been ruled by the Alawite Assad family. The Alawites are a Shiite offshoot known for their syncretic views and less strict adherence to Islamic dietary restrictions. The small global Alawite population is primarily concentrated along Syria’s coast.
An Alawite State existed under French colonial rule, largely favored because Alawites were more favorable to the French than Sunni Syrians. Similar projects were undertaken in favor of Maronite Christians, who were given Greater Lebanon and a Druze state in southern Syria. The Alawite State lasted from 1922 to 1936 before being incorporated into the wider Syria as a compromise by French authorities with Syrian Arab nationalists.
The prospect of reviving the Alawite State was raised in the early days of the Syrian civil war, when the tide looked to be turning against Assad, before Iranian and Russian intervention. A Washington Institute report from 2013 said the hypothetical state would have been made up of Latakia and Tartus Governorates — the only two with majority Alawite populations, in addition to a substantial Christian minority.
The idea of a Russian-backed Alawite State has some support among Russia’s elites, who are cognizant of the strategic significance of their bases in the country.
The former speaker of the Russian separatist parliament in Novorossiya, Oleg Tsaryov, once likely slated to lead a pro-Russian government in Ukraine, expressed support for the creation of an Alawite State.
“The best guarantee of [Christian and Alawite] freedoms would be the restoration of the Alawite State. Well, or at least the status that the Kurds de facto have in Syria (and this would save Europe from a new flow of refugees). Well, and the guarantee of such a status would be Russian military bases,” he said in a Telegram post on the day of Damascus’s fall.
One Russian milblogger, MIG Russia, suggested forming the Alawi People’s Republic and holding a referendum on whether to join Russia.
The Assad regime put the minority Alawites into key leadership positions, connecting them in popular perception with the regime. Analysts warned that a genocide of Alawites could take place in the event of Assad’s fall.
Christians, who were protected and also held prominently under the Assad regime, were also targets of militant violence. Even during the early anti-Assad protests in the spring of 2011, a common chant was “Alawis to the grave and Christians to Beirut!”
The now-dominant faction in Syria, Hayat Tahrir al Sham, an outgrowth of al Qaeda, has pledged tolerance of all minorities. However, its forces are made up of jihadist militants, who were shown on video committing a slew of atrocities, including beheadings and the desecration of corpses during their lightning offensive that led to Assad’s collapse.
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Videos posted on social media after the fall of the Assad regime purport to show the murder of Alawites by Sunni Islamic militants.
If such abuses continue, the majority Alawite population could revive Assad’s alleged plan, with or without him at the head. The former president has gone into exile with his family in Russia, reportedly with no interest in returning.
