For half a century, Syria’s Alawites have lived inside an identity fashioned not by themselves but by a regime that bound them to power and stripped them of self-definition. With the collapse of the Syrian state, a reckoning became inevitable: how can the community reclaim an identity from a history it did not write, and how might it contribute to a new Syria where no group is trapped in a single, suffocating image?
This essay examines how the relationship between the Alawites, the state, and Syrian society was shaped—and distorted—by fear, repression, and reciprocal mistrust. The mirror that reflects the community has long been warped, revealing little of its true history or its lived reality.
A Community Consumed by the System
From 1963 onward, Baathist rule dissolved plurality into a single mould. Under Hafez al-Assad, this mould became a mechanism of total control: the regime swallowed the Alawite community, monopolised its voice, and transformed its youth into a reservoir for military service. Sectarianism served as a mask—isolating the Alawites while using them as a shield for authoritarian rule. The system was never “Alawite rule,” but Assad’s rule in the name of the Alawites and, simultaneously, at their expense.
Bashar al-Assad inherited and refined this machinery. He intensified the illusion that the Alawites controlled the state while leaving their villages mired in poverty, crumbling infrastructure, and chronic deprivation. Military enlistment became not a political choice but an economic lifeline.
2011: Fear Reawakened
When the revolution broke out, the regime revived its oldest narrative: “sectarian targeting” and “slaughter by identity.” Decades of fear made dissent nearly impossible, and the community—lacking assurances from either the opposition or the wider society—found itself pushed once again into the regime’s embrace.
Some Alawite dissidents did emerge, but they remained isolated and overwhelmed. A historic error unfolded: the community did not join the peaceful protests, a stance that might have hastened the fall of a regime that had long exploited it. Instead, Alawite youth were consumed once more in a war fought for a ruling family that plundered the state while abandoning its supporters.
After the Regime’s Fall: The “Remnants” Narrative
The regime’s collapse exposed a vacuum filled by competing narratives. Among them was the discourse of the “remnants” (fulūl), which painted the Alawites as extensions of the former order. In the absence of state authority and amid proliferating weapons, coastal massacres erupted—acts of vengeance that revived the very fears the regime had cultivated for decades.
The social cost was immense: dismissals from public institutions, the collapse of services, and the destruction of rural communities already trapped in poverty. Yet these events also sparked, for the first time, a discussion on the need for an Alawite representative framework—leading to the formation of the Supreme Alawite Islamic Council as an attempt to reclaim voice and agency.
The community now faces an existential task: avoiding the fusion of religious identity with political allegiance that has trapped it for decades. A new path must disentangle community from regime, identity from power, religion from coercion. This choice will shape not only the future of the Alawites but of Syria as a whole.
Toward a New National Role
The Alawites today form a diverse mosaic:
- intellectuals, artists, students, and human rights defenders;
- the “grey middle” who lived within the state without belonging to its machinery;
- exiles driven out before adulthood;
- old leftists who resisted Baathist authoritarianism;
- broken soldiers seeking recognition, not power;
- the destitute of the mountains and coast, long excluded from development;
- and the true remnants: the security figures and profiteers shaped by the regime.
This diversity demands a civil framework, not a purely religious one—one that includes intellectual, political, human rights, and youth representatives. Religious leaders may contribute, but cannot monopolise representation.
Such a framework must articulate a national vision grounded in citizenship rather than inherited proximity to power. Central to this vision is justice: acknowledging the need to hold Bashar al-Assad and all those complicit in Syrian blood accountable is, for the Alawites, an act of liberation that severs the artificial tie between community and regime.
It must also reject calls for foreign protection. Sovereignty is indivisible, and the Alawites are part of a national fabric no partitionist project can unravel.
A new civil reference could help rebuild a state whose social contract remains unwritten—one in which the Alawite community moves from being a “file” or an “accusation” to an active partner in shaping Syria’s future. This requires transparent investigations into coastal abuses, accountability for violations, and the restoration of civil and economic rights.
Syria has revealed a wound concealed for half a century. Standing before that wound is the Syrian human being—facing his history at last.
In the narrow space between what has ended and what has yet to begin, the Alawite community, like all Syrian communities, advances not in search of privilege or protection, but in pursuit of a deeper question: How does one return to a homeland from which they were severed, and to a time they have not yet lived?
This article was translated and edited by The Syrian Observer. The Syrian Observer has not verified the content of this story. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author.
