If Alawites are turning against Assad then his fate is sealed

If Alawites are turning against Assad then his fate is sealed


There seems to be a Baathist pattern of destroying Sunni
villages on the edge of the Alawite heartland

ROBERT FISK

MONDAY 23 JULY 2012

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-if-alawites-are-turning-against-assad-then-his-fate-is-sealed-7965154.html

'Her husband's to Aleppo gone, master o' th' Tiger,"
Macbeth's First Witch announces, but Shakespeare got his
geography a bit wrong. Aleppo is 70 miles from the
Mediterranean. It's certainly ancient; Aleppo was
mentioned in the cuneiform tablets of Ebla in the third
millennium BC and belonged to the Hittites and the Emperor
Justinian, its 14th-century citadel walls still lowering
today over the revolutionary capital of northern Syria.

And that's the point. While the drama of last week's



assault on Bashar al-Assad's regime in Damascus stunned



the Arab world, the sudden outbreak of violence in Aleppo



this weekend was in one way far more important. For Aleppo



is the richest city in Syria - infinitely more so than



Damascus - and if the revolution has now touched this



centre of wealth, then the tacit agreement between the



Alawite-controlled government and the Sunni middle classes



must truly be cracking.







As the birthplace of agriculture - the Euphrates is only



70 miles to the east - Aleppo is also the headquarters of



the International Centre for Agricultural Research in Dry



Areas (Icarda), one of the finest institutions of its kind



in the world. It increases food production in Asia and



Africa in an area containing a billion people, 50 per cent



of whom earn their living from agriculture. Donors include



Britain, Canada, the US, Germany, Holland, the World Bank



- you name it. And its 500 employees are still operating



in Aleppo.







Alas, its principal research station at Tel Hadya, 20



miles from Aleppo, was raided by gunmen who stole vehicles



- to use them as "technicals" mounted with machine guns -



along with farm machinery and computers. Mercifully,



Icarda's gene bank is safe and has been duplicated outside



Syria. The Syrian government moved a military checkpoint



closer to Icarda's property at Tel Hadya - the Syrian



ministry of agriculture was always one of the more



progressive offices in Damascus - but what use this will



be in the coming days, we shall see.







Across all of Syria, the revolution has spread.



Tragically, there now seems to be a Baathist pattern of



destroying Sunni villages on the edge of the Alawite



heartland, the "frontier" of Alawi-stan in the great



agricultural plain of Hama province, below the mountains



where the Assad home town of Qardaha stands.







Last Wednesday, for example, two Syrian helicopters



attacked the small Sunni town of Haouch, forcing its 7,000



population to run for their lives. For two weeks, Haouch



and other small Sunni towns have been shelled; they do



indeed contain rebels but there is a growing suspicion -



no evidence, mark you - that this is a deliberate policy



of the Baath to prepare Syria for partition if Damascus



falls. Ominously, this "frontier" of fire matches almost



precisely the "State of the Alawites" temporarily created



by the post-First World War French mandate which chopped



Syria up into mini-nations partly on sectarian lines.







There are equal suspicions, I should add, that the first



great Syrian massacre of throat-cutting and executions in



the Sunni village of Houla on 25 May might have been a



reprisal for the attempted poisoning of Bashar al-Assad's



brother-in-law Asef Shawkat, whom the rebels at last cut



down in the bombing in Damascus last Wednesday. Others say



the attempted poisoning was more recent; but everything



that happened - and happens - in Syria is connected.







Take the faint outline of the old French mini-state of the



Hauran where Syria's Druze communities now live in growing



disharmony with the Assad regime. This month, there was a



dangerous outbreak of kidnapping in the region - resolved



only after Walid Jumblatt, the Lebanese Druze leader, made



a series of phone calls to prominent Druze in Syria.



Jumblatt himself has had a



friendly-hostile-friendly-hostile-relationship with the



Assad family - I may have left out a couple of 'friendlys'



and 'hostiles' there - but there is no doubt where he now



stands.







Last week, he urged the Druze as well as the Alawites in



Syria to join the revolt against the Assad regime. He has



even attacked his allies in Moscow, calling Russia's



support for Assad "no longer acceptable, morally or



politically."







And not without reason does he speak thus. Three Syrian



Druze have died in the revolution this month. Majd Zein, a



Druze Free Syrian Army member, was killed during an attack



on Rastan. Shafiq Shuqayr and Yasser Awwad were executed



by the Syrian army when they were discovered to be helping



government soldiers to defect in the area of Lajat. Now



Jumblatt is calling upon all Alawites to join the



rebellion instead of allowing themselves to remain a



minority dependent on Assad for their survival. "I say to
them that they must say they are Syrians before they are
Alawites."

And a final statistic to explain the revolution outside
Damascus. Latest figures show that 58 per cent of Syrian's
population under 24 years old are unemployed (higher,
even, than Egypt), while 48 per cent of the 18-29 year-old
age range - a statistic only beaten by Yemen - have no
jobs. They do now, of course. Most have joined the Syrian
revolt.