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The root causes of war in Syria are the Alawites. Headed by Assad, and his father before him. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bashar_al-Assad https://en.wikipedi
by greenieweenie 3y ago
The root causes of war in Syria are the Alawites. Headed by Assad, and his father before him.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bashar_al-Assad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bashar_al-Assad
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafez_al-Assad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafez_al-Assad
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alawites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alawites
Daddy Assad got swept into power as part of a military coup by the Ba'ath Party shortly after the same thing happened in Iraq with another familiar character, Saddam Hussein.
He then proceeded to rule with the iron fist of a socialist military dictator (with the backing and advice of the Soviets). Up until the year 2000 people in Syria only had access to state sponsored television/radio/news until their information sphere got embiggened first with satellite dishes and later with smartphones which caused the minority tribe in charge to lose control of their internal propaganda narratives.
Note on the map all the lines are straight as Syria was never an actual viable country by design.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes–Picot_Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes–Picot_Agreement
It is a violent tribal society. This goes much deeper than the basics of Sunni/Shia splits, if you are the wrong tribe or clan or from the wrong village or wrong family you deserve a gruesome death, 'etc. This pattern repeats across most of the Middle East region which traditionally needed strong rulers/empires to forcefully hold it together.
I assure you the guys from the various rebel factions, ISIS, 'etc, who beheaded people and cut out their hearts on YouTube were not complaining about over-grazing or human rights.
It didn't start with climate change, it started back here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_the_Ottoman_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_the_Ottoman_Empir...
- dopidopHN 3y agoYes, partition of the sick man of Europe. And resulting vacuum power.
- throw310822 3y agoOne interesting thing is that the Human Development Index of Syria just before the war was much higher than that of India and in par with China (and the world average). Now it's collapsed.
- the-printer 3y agoThank you for this. It feels like this article undermines the history of the region. To even evoke the Arab Spring, to me is an easy way to sound informed without acknowledging how/why the affected regions “sprung”. It’s an interesting supporting detail, but maybe “root causes” is a pun or something.
- kingofpandora 3y ago"It was the Alawites" is an astonishingly reductive conclusion. Assad himself is has a Sunni wife; many non-Kurdish Sunnis - perhaps a plurality - continue to support his government, just as do many Christians. And even if that wasn't true, how can you blame "all Alawites" when not even all Alawites support Assad?
- greenieweenie 3y ago[flagged]