Collateral damage

Muslims, Christians, Alawis, Druze and Ishmaelites: No other country in the Middle East, except perhaps for tiny Lebanon, has such a multiplicity of religious and ethnic groups. The Assad family's regime hasn't followed a particular political doctrine in its 41-year rule. According to its constitution, Syria is a secular state, and there is a powerful state-run economic sector.

But the protests against the Assad regime could lead to religious and ethnic tensions, says Middle East expert Volker Perthes from the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) in Berlin. Syria's religious minorities in particular are worried that the demise of the Assad regime could be a long and bloody affair, and that it could result in civil-war style conflicts.

"There could be religious tensions and acts of revenge," Perthes warned.

Alawis fear becoming targets

So far in more homogenous countries like Tunesia and Egypt, acts of revenge have been avoided. But they are altogether possible in Syria, Perthes says.

Alawis in particular should fear being targeted, since the Assad family itself is Alawi. Moreover, like his father before him, Bashar al-Assad has filled most key positions in the government, military and secret service with Alawis.

Now, Damascus has already begun fanning the flames of the first conflicts between Sunni and Alawi Muslims, Perthes said: "They are arming Alawi villages that are geographically near Sunni villages. Those are dangerous tendencies. Normal members of a minority group, who don't profit from the regime, are afraid of it - and rightly so."

Since the protests began, Damascus has said it is acting to put down an armed revolution. The regime blames the unrest on foreign actors and influences: Islamists; Salafi muslims; sometimes even the Lebanese.

Syria's leaders knowingly play on the peoples' fears of interreligious conflict - and that makes the demonstrators even more angry, said Syria expert and journalist Kristin Helberg.

"Through their slogans and posters, (the demonstrators) keep trying to show that they are for the unity of all Syrian people, that they are against religious divisions, and that they want to create reform and change together with all religious groups."

A heterogeneous society

Including Kurds, some 70 percent of Syrians are Sunni Muslims. Alawis, Druze and Ishmaelites make up about 20 percent of the Syrian population. Some 10 percent of Syrians are Christian.

On top of that there are Christian Iraqis, who came to the country as refugees from Iraq, where they were being persecuted. More than a few Syrian Christians are afraid that, should the Assad family fall, they too will be forced into exile. And they are afraid of the violence and chaos that has overtaken neighboring Iraq, Helberg said.

They fear that if the Assad family were to fall and be replaced by a conservative Sunni Muslim government, they too would face discrimination - or even persecution.

Sunnis are currently severely underrepresented in the government, given that they are the majority of the population. But they carry higher positions than Christians.

SWP's Perthes said there is no need for Syrian Christians to worry, however. Should there ever be an election in the country, the various minorities would not support a fundamentalist Sunni Muslim leadership, he said.

Support for secularism

"Among Sunni Muslims, there is currently a trend that middle-class, well-educated people want to maintain the secular system," Perthes said. So there is limited potential for voter support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria. For Syrians the Muslim Brotherhood - which was expelled from Syria in the 1980s on the grounds that it was a militant organization - has mostly existed in exile.

"They learned there that they can't push through a strictly fundamentalist agenda," Perthes added.

Throughout the rule of first Hafez, then Bashar al-Assad, any fundamentalist strains in Syrian society have been systematically oppressed. And while the Assads are known for keeping up good contacts to the Shi'ite Hezbollah movements in Lebanon and in Iran, they have never let them into the country, Perthes said.

"The Assad regime has been pragmatic. It didn't give Islamists much elbow room. And yet it cooperated well in terms of foreign policy with Hamas and Hezbollah. Any similar Islamist political tendencies (within Syria) were simply put down," he said.

In the past, the Assads let it be known that, as Syrian Alawis, they would look after the welfare of minorities. In fact, Syria has a tradition of religious tolerance that goes back beyond the reign of the Assad's Baath Party.

Prior to 1970, the Muslim majority in Syria formed the government, and put forth most ministers. But there were Christians and Alawis in the government as well. That has partly to do with the fact that Syria lies along the major trading route from Turkey into the Arab World. Because of that, various cultures and communities came together and left their mark on Syrian history and culture.

Benefit for the West?

If indeed Assad were to fall and ethnic tensions were to flare up, minorities in Syria would hardly need to worry about a majority Sunni government. It is unlikely that a strict, theocratic government would pop up, either. Thanks to groundwork laid by the Assad family, there are hardly any fundamentalist organizations in the country.

A change of government in Syria would play right into the hands of the West, because it would break the Syria-Lebanon Shi'ite axis, said Thomas Pierret, a Mideast specialist at the Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO) in Berlin. Hezbollah would lose its most important ties in the region.

"A regime change in Syria would seriously weaken Hezbollah in Lebanon. And while Hezbollah is so often tied to the old Assad regime, I just cannot imagine that a new government would build good ties to Hezbollah in the near future," Pierret said.

Author: Diana Hodali (jen)
Editor: Rob Mudge