Posted on 09/08/2013 8:18:39 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
The Obama administration -- with the backing of key Republicans in Congress -- is poised to embark on a strategy that entails punitive airstrikes on Syrian government positions and stepped-up lethal aid to moderate elements of the Syrian opposition.
So far, however, the Syrian opposition has been unable to win significant support from the country's ethnic and religious minorities. Without such support, the opposition is unlikely to prevail even with stepped-up U.S. assistance. Moreover, the inability of the Syrian rebels, who are almost all Sunni Muslim Arabs, to win over the country's Kurds, Alawites and Christians raises the question of whether their victory is even desirable.
Over the last year, I have met with Kurdish, Christian and Alawite representatives as part of an effort to help prepare them to negotiate for their communities in a post-Bashar Assad Syria. I have been struck by the sense of unease they all feel about what may follow in Syria. (By most estimates, each group is about 11% of Syria's population, although Christian numbers have dropped in recent years and Kurdish numbers have risen.)
As a group, the Alawites have the most to lose. Although the Alawites consider themselves Muslims, many Sunnis consider them to be apostates, and they were long a marginalized community in Syria, living in impoverished villages in the Alawite mountains north of Lebanon. When the current president's father, Hafez, became president more than 40 years ago, life changed significantly for his fellow Alawites. Today, they dominate the upper ranks of the military and security forces, and they provide the regime with its most reliable troops. Some Alawites would prefer a democratic, pluralistic Syria without Assad, but almost none believe this is possible.
"Christians to Beirut; Alawites to the grave" emerged early in the war as a slogan of anti-regime fighters
(Excerpt) Read more at aina.org ...
Does that mean that Beirut will need to be liberated from the Muslims?
You mean the ones they are killing, raping, trying to make convert with a gun to their head.... jeesh, I wonder why they don't switch sides to that
Syrian minorities make up to 33% of the population in Syria. That's why they back Assad, if he's gone, they're all wiped out. As simple as that.
The shit never much cared for Christians in ME.
No, it means that they just want the Christians out of Syria. Beirut used to be Christian majority, so these Islamists figures that they can go there. As for the Alawites, the Islamists want to annihilate all of them.
Assad is not good, but it’s interesting that his grandfather could sum of the Islamists well: “The spirit of fanaticism and narrow-mindedness, whose roots are deep in the heart of the Arab Muslims toward all those who are not Muslim, is the spirit that continually feeds the Islamic religion, and therefore there is no hope that the situation will change.”
Better than having their mothers, wives and daughters raped before their eyes by the Sunni "rebels" and then killed slowly...
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