Syria is a mosaic of minorities: Druze, Alawites, Christians, Kurds, and others. The secular (Alawite) regime of the Baath Party—under Hafez al-Assad and later his son Bashar—granted these minorities religious freedom and protection. This protection gave the Bashar regime, doomed by the civil war, a kind of life-sustaining oxygen. Indeed, during the civil war that began in 2011, the Syrian regime skillfully played the minority card.
For years, the equation was simple: If Assad was toppled, Islamist groups would sow chaos and eradicate minorities. We all witnessed the atrocities of ISIS against Christians and other minorities like the Yazidis, both in Syria and Iraq.
Moreover, no Western state seriously sought Assad’s overthrow—despite sanctions against his regime and its officials. On the contrary, in the past two years, Assad was reintegrated into the Arab state community after previous exclusion, even attending several Arab summits.
In other words, there was no will to oust Assad—simply because there was no alternative to him. Toppling Assad would have meant civil war and total anarchy in Syria, including...
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