The war against Bashar al-Assad’s Syria was a war against all piously true Muslims

Hardly of any doubt is the noticeably prevalent and easily observed narrative motif that the war against Syria is commonly presented through a manufactured sectarian framework of religious identity politics, of Bashar al-Assad’s late Ancien Régime as some inherent “minority Shi’ite/Alawite regime” pitted against the Sunni majority populace of the Syrian nation, and that the 2011-24 war in Syria must inherently be understood as a “Sunni-Shi’ite war” defined at its core by Islamic sect differences.

As I will demonstrate in this para-extensive compilation of well-sourced record-keeping, such a notion is not only a racist Zionist-Nazi sewer of outside-imposed misrepresentation garbage, but outright false: contrary to the mainstreamed widespread myth of Bashar al-Assad as a “persecutor of Sunni Muslims,” the reality was always the polar opposite: Assad was fundamentally a protector of the cradle of the Sunni Islamic majority of the Syrian population.

Not only that, but Assad was demonstrably the protector of all piously devoted and kenotically traditionalist Muslims (not to mention the other ethnic and religious groupings as well), overseeing a nation that constituted the last ultimate bastion of Islamic civilization against a wave of Anglo-Zionist unleashed voluptuous savagery that has manifested as the front (yes, as in the “jabhat” in “Jabhat al-Nusra” and “Jabhat Fateh al-Sham”) for the war against not only Islam, but quite literally all of humanity. (mind you, I say this as myself a kenotically piety-seeking Christian without any contradiction whatsoever)

Let’s start here with addressing this common deceptive argument—it runs along the lines of, “Assad belonged to the minority Alawite fringe offshoot sect of Islam that comprises only 10-12% of Syrians, and treated the Sunni majority as second-class subjugated citizens whose interests were not represented by the regime.”

First off, this is an imposition of a western neo-Marxist, Nazi-esque, and Zionist-adjacent racial identity politics mindset of assuming that Syria as an Arab nation must inherently be defined by its diverse population’s millions of individual human beings being clannishly secluded each to their own “sect” ethnic/religious identity heritages and distrusting/hating other sects. This is the complete polar opposite of reality: Syria in modern history—alongside Iraq—has ALWAYS been the foremost embodiment of societally lived-and-breathed mutual cross-sect diverse human tolerance and material solidarity. To assume that everyday nationalistic Syrians in their majority inherently follow suit in sectarian thinking is to falsely assume that they are just as degenerate and wretched as the Zionist-brainwashed fools from without who artificially impose that misrepresented portrayal of them.

Under the Ba’ath Party—most especially Bashar al-Assad’s reign—Syria as a resolutely left-wing progressive/socialist and secular nationalist society was utterly devoid of sectarian identity politics in stark contrast to the tribal cultism of left-right woke-racism cycles in the West. Here’s a case example from an imperial horse’s mouth:1

I recall another incident, this one unfolding after I was appointed as an assistant lecturer at Aleppo University. I was sharing a hotel room with a colleague whom I understood from her telltale dialect to hail from western Syria, around Lattakia, from which the Assad family and his core base come. We got to chatting, and she started talking about her family and traditions in her community. In a moment of absent-mindedness and naïveté, I broached a taboo topic with her and inquired about her sect.

She was shocked at my query. She responded with anger, delivering a thinly disguised threat. ‘Oh, be careful, this could take you to jail.’

This is not to say that under the Assads, the treatment of Syria’s robustly diverse population was always neatly perfect vis-à-vis implementation of self-professed egalitarian credentials. Certainly under Hafez, cynical policies of crude “divide-and-conquer” generically empirical instrumentalization were enacted that were paternalistic under his inner “Old Guard” circle, and which Bashar couldn’t entirely overturn fully. While it is technically true that the highest governmental leadership of Ba’athist Syria were disproportionally drawn nominally from those of Alawite derivation, this is at the same time not tantamount to instant proof that the Sunni populace majority were irreconcilably mortal enemies of the government.

No matter how exceedingly ad nauseum of an effort Assad’s ungodly detractors attempt to paint him as hated by all Syrian Sunnis, the horse’s mouth from none other than internal jihadist confessions beg to sharply differ—oops!2

‘If Sunnis were united behind the rebels, trust me, Bashar would've fallen within days,’ says Abu Qays, an anti-regime Syrian activist in the eastern city of Deir e-Zor who uses a nickname for security reasons. ‘Do you think those who are committing (these) massacres are all Alawites?’

The article continues:

As the rebels persist despite setbacks and unrelenting military bombardment, these pro-regime Sunnis are facing increasing pressure to abandon the Syrian president. Should Assad fall, the lives of his Sunni collaborators will be worthless, say rebels.

‘They continue to be loyal to the regime so that they’re rewarded with positions if it survives – if the regime falls, they think they’ll just leave Syria,’ says Um Raghad, an anti-Assad activist in the west-central Syrian city of Hama. ‘What they don’t know is that we’re going to go after them wherever they go.’

Sunnis supporting Assad range throughout Syrian society. Ali Mamlouk, a Sunni, heads the Syrian National Security Bureau, while Vice President Farouq al-Sharaa, a Sunni, has been a fixture in Assad circles for decades. Sunni Walid Muallem is foreign minister.

Many Sunni business people have close ties to the Assad regime as well.

‘The money of traders and businessmen is prolonging the regime’s life,’ says Wael al-Khatib, the general coordinator of a Free Officers group – composed of defected officers from the Syrian military – in Homs. His unit includes about 450 Syrian army officers who abandoned the regime and now fight with the Free Syrian Army.

‘Their support is unlimited,’ he says.

A particular target of rebel hatred is Sunni businessman Talal al-Dakkak, who is accused of having close ties to Maher al Assad, Assad’s brother and the head of the government’s Republican Guard.

Al-Dakkak made his fortune in the ceramics and medical supplies industry and has been implicated in official Free Syrian Army documents as an informant for Syrian Air Force Intelligence, a central branch of the regime’s security apparatus. The Free Syrian Army called him a “traitor and the number one regime informant in Hama.”

Other significant Sunni Assad-backers include Emad Ghraiwait, Fares Chehabi and Tarif Akhras, who were hit with European Union sanctions in 2011 for ‘providing economic support to the Syrian regime.’ Among the largest exporters in Syria, Akhras is related to Asma al-Assad, Syria’s first lady.

Al-Khatib, who served as an army captain with the regime for 13 years before defecting in January 2012, says he has a long list of Sunni business people who back the regime.

‘They belong to the sect of money,’ he says.

One is Rama Tarabishi, 26, a Sunni woman from Damascus

The rebel Free Syrian Army, specifically the aligned Jabhet Al Nusra fighters, are ‘nothing more than lunatics who kill everyone who disagrees with them,’ Tarabishi says, while noting that the Assad regime is a secular one that tolerates diversity.

‘President Assad is surely better than the political vacuum, religious hegemony, brutal, sectarian domination which would occasion on his downfall,’ she says. ‘I believe anybody who took the time to monitor, absorb, and analyze the situation, especially given the recent deterioration on the ground, would logically stick to and support the government.’

Tarabishi blames Western intervention for her nation’s unraveling – a counterpoint to the rebels’ claims that Iran, Russia and Lebanon’s Hezbollah fighters are propping up the Syrian regime.

But she admits that United Nations-backed economic sanctions meant to spur dissent against Assad’s regime, and the attacks of the Free Syrian Army, are taking their toll.

‘Previously in Syria, even the poorest individual was able to survive,’ Tarabishi says. ‘However, now, 90% of the middle-class people find that hard.’

The article goes on of course—since USA Today is of course a western empire organ—to spin some copium and ambiguously argue that because some Sunnis couldn’t defect out of fear, that therefore Sunni support for Assad was driven by fear and intimidation.

It’s nonetheless incredible how much of the patently obvious truth is openly admitted by the very outward-facing media organs beholden to the very propaganda complexes plastering denialist lies in the complete opposite direction—even the Great Satan’s “Combating Terrorism Center” (CTC) organ admits this much factual reality:3

Little has been said, however, of the Ba’athist regime’s support among Syria’s majority Sunni population.

…

Sunnis (and others) who harbor genuine misgivings toward the government may still feel more threatened by the armed opposition. These feelings are likely to have crystallized given the prevalence of radical Sunni Islamist currents within the insurgents. These sentiments are reflected in numerous segments of Syria’s Sunnis. They are most apparent, however, among urban Sunnis, including the middle- and upper-class strata and, in particular, the business and merchant classes that were cultivated by the Ba’athist regime over many years. The armed opposition has singled out a number of powerful Sunni businessmen for their purported roles in helping to sustain the Ba’athists, including the organization of irregular militias; and the smuggling of hard currency, arms, and critical goods.

Class-based dynamics have also shaped negative perceptions of the opposition among the many Sunnis who remain loyal to the current regime. The perception of the opposition as a rural-based movement led by religiously conservative, poor, and unsophisticated villagers has alienated wide segments of urban Sunnis, who have little in common socially with their co-religionists.

In a very simple nutshell: it as never a simple “Alawite vs. Sunni” conflict as empirically masturbatory wet-dreaming Zionist racists—along with anti-Islamic “Muslim” Brotherhood shillpieces—fantasize of. There was in fact an intra-Sunni conflict between the urban, “bourgeois,”4 secular nationalist-integrated Sunnis (namely in Aleppo, cf. this and this) who learned to navigate and thrive under an imperfect albeit functionally stable Assadist government, in contrast to rural superficially-religious ultraconservatives. A more precise assessment would be i.e. that Bashar’s Syria was a socialist-bourgeois “third way” progressive coalition of all sects under a left-wing nationalist banner fending off a western/Gulf/Zionist-backed front of reactionary pseudo-Sunni theocratic uncivilized Nazi savages.

Cont.:5

The strong Sunni presence in Syria’s military and security apparatus has also been overlooked. Much of the Ba’athist military and security apparatus is commanded by Alawite officers who are bound by relations to family, kin, clan, or tribe. Many elite squads and sections are led directly by al-Assad’s relatives. Nonetheless, Sunnis and, more specifically, Sunni Arabs, continue to make up the majority of the regular army’s rank-and-file membership.

Estimates indicate that Sunnis account for between 60 and 65 percent of the regular army. Despite mass defections by thousands of mostly Sunni conscripts and mid-level officers and growing reports of recruitment problems, Sunnis continue to be well represented in Syria’s security institutions in various capacities, including leadership and other specialized roles. This is the case even as the reasons behind their continued service—and that of other Syrians—may vary.

The participation of auxiliary elements such as Lebanese Hezbollah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force in Syria in both kinetic and advisory capacities, combined with the presence of Shi’a militia formations from Iraq, and other Shi’a volunteers from as far away as Afghanistan has strengthened the Ba’athist regime.

At the same time, Sunni participation likely mitigated against a catastrophic collapse of the Ba’athist military. Indeed, Sunni participation has not been lost on the opposition.

The journal lists this very pertinent quoted extract in the footnotes:6

This view [that Sunni participation has not been lost on the opposition] is encapsulated in the following observation by an opposition activist: ‘We all know that most of the security forces shooting at us and killing us are Sunnis, not Alawites, this is not about sect’ See Phil Sands, ‘Sectarianism Casts Shadow Over Syria’s Uprising,’ National [Abu Dhabi], June 21, 2012. Also see Yahya Alous, ‘Sunnis Against Sunnis,’ Syrian Observer, April 8, 2015.

It couldn’t be more clear that Syria’s Sunni majority were chief of part and parcel of Assad’s internal nationalist base resiliently holding together the so-called “regime” for so long:7

Nevertheless, there are reports that Sunnis are sometimes assigned to less sensitive positions and have otherwise become the subject of increased attention by commanders. In a manner characteristic of autocratic regimes, the Syrian army and other sections of the security apparatus remain highly politicized institutions.

At the same time, Sunnis are known to have participated in the Popular Committee detachments that preceded the summer 2012 establishment of the National Defense Force (NDF) paramilitary. As an auxiliary to the regular military and security apparatus, the NDF has emerged as a critical component of the Ba’athist military machine. The administration is also reported to be leveraging the NDF as a way to co-opt or otherwise neutralize disenchanted insurgent elements.

Participation in the NDF, in lieu of conscription in the regular Syrian army—a prospect that has become increasingly unpopular—also appears to be a way to ensure that Syrians remain loyal to the Ba’athist regime or otherwise neutral.

Sunnis, for example, are well represented in NDF units based in Aleppo and elsewhere. Sunnis have also continued to play a prominent role in other sections of Syria’s vast security apparatus.

The Ba’athist’s mobilization of shabiha (ghosts), irregular militia formations that were used to quell displays of popular dissent and perform other acts of repression, has seen notable traction among Sunnis. The participation of the predominantly Sunni Berri clan, a prominent criminal organization based in Aleppo that has close ties to the regime, in the recruitment and deployment of shabiha gangs is an example.

The role and influence of Sunni Arab tribes in the ongoing conflict remain topics of close scrutiny. Syria’s traditional tribal heartlands along the borders with Jordan, Iraq, and Turkey have emerged as bastions for the different ideological currents represented within the armed opposition. Yet the Bagarra tribe, which contains both Sunni and Shi’a members, has remained largely loyal to the al-Assad government.

The Ba’athist regime has also bolstered the NDF’s ranks with loyal Sunni Arab tribesmen who act as crucial proxies for the regime to different degrees in provinces as diverse as Al-Raqqah, Al-Hassakah, Dara’a, and Deir al-Zour.

You read that right: even the so-called “shabiha,” commonly seized upon as a lightning rod by anti-Assad terrorism bootlickers as a failsafe scapegoat to reinforce the “Alawite regime persecuting Sunnis” argument, actually itself consisted notably of Sunni tribal factions. If anything drew the greatest ire of the jihadists, it was that their chief raison d’être of self-proclaimed en masse Sunni representation was exposed as a fraud, for the so-called “revolutionaries” themselves spoke of pro-Assad Sunnis as “worse than the Alawites.”8

Anti-Assad media outlet Al Jazeera also admitted in its 2011 coverage that Bashar’s support extended not only to minorities but also Sunni sectors:9

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Nir Rosen, journalist and author, said: ‘We might not like to think that but authoritarian regimes sometimes have popular support.

‘In the whole of the Arab countries, certainly the Syrian regime has the largest base of popular support and much of the country still supports him [Assad].

‘Not only Alawite and the Christian community, but even Sunni Bourgeoisie in Damascus and Aleppo support President Assad.’

‘They may be afraid of the unknown, or the civil war, or they may genuinely believe that Assad has done good stuff for the country.

‘The regime is kind of a marriage between Alawite-dominated security forces and the Sunni business class.

‘See the Iraq scenario, Christians of Iraq were destroyed, they came to Syria in large numbers. So, Christians fear what may happen to them?

‘The opposition has failed to reach out successfully to Alawites, Christians and Druze. Many of them believe there will be civil war should the regime fall, and I think it is quite likely.’

Considering that apparently an actual majority of Syrians at-large have been polled and reported as supportive of (or at least tacitly preferring) Assad,1011 vis-à-vis the obvious demographical fact that some ~70% of Syrians are Sunni, it’s utterly implausible to absurd extents to assume that “the sheer vast majority of Syrian Sunnis loathe Assad and want(ed) him gone.”

Moreover, any suggestion that it was in Assad’s governmental vested self-interest to manufacture sectarianism is as cognition-stupefying as the notion that he decided to use chemical weapons against civilians in battles he was already winning. Those who principally benefited from any stoked sectarian strife within Syria were empirical Zionists and Salafi-jihadists, not the Ba’athist government that relied on crucially pivotal détente support from the ~70% Sunni population majority:12

Falsely casting the conflict as between Alawites on the one hand, and all of Syria’s Sunnis on the other, was a deliberate strategy employed by the opposition in the hope of encouraging Sunni Syrian soldiers to defect from the army. Popp notes further that, ‘Some rebels believe that by recasting the conflict as a sectarian antagonism between the Sunni majority and pro-regime minorities—which include not only Alawites, but also Christians, Ismailis, and Druze—they can accelerate the disintegration of the armed forces.’ Stoking a sectarian civil was therefore to the advantage of the opposition, not the Syrian government, as is often claimed. It is also consistent with a Salafist worldview, with its sectarianism dating back to the thought of the medieval theological innovator, Ibn Taymiyyah.

Such an outcome, a Sunni-Alawite civil war and the collapse of the Syrian state and army, was viewed positively by elements of the Israeli intelligence community, because such a scenario would ‘obstruct Iran from its nuclear activities for a good deal of time,’ and possibly ‘even prove to be a factor in the eventual fall of the current government of Iran.’ The desire to weaken Iran explains in part why not only Israeli, but also U.S. planners supported the Syrian opposition, of which al-Qaeda constituted ‘a big chunk,’ as acknowledged by Barack Obama’s deputy national security advisor, Ben Rhodes.

To cut through the propaganda fog: the actual divide between “pro-Assad” and “anti-Assad” within the Syrian landscape is far more motivated by class, rural-vs.-urban, and intra-sect orientation differences, than between at-large “sects” themselves. Even the so-called “Free Syrian Army” (FSA) “moderate rebels” (← warning: highly graphic image) lacked anywhere close to uniform support from the rank-and-file mass majority of everyday Syrian Sunnis, who really just found the entire Salafi-jihadist apparatus quite unappealing, to put it mildly:13

A Red Cross employee who worked in both opposition and government-controlled areas stated the matter succinctly: ‘If there are secularist rebels, I haven’t met them.’

The Salafist and Islamist roots of both the broader protest movement and nascent armed insurgency ensured that the so-called Syrian revolution lacked any significant popular legitimacy. Though Syria’s population is majority Sunni, this does not translate to support for Salafism, an innovative ideology which is rejected by the Sunni Muslim mainstream.

As Syrian Muslim Brotherhood leader Ali al-Bayanouni acknowledged, ‘Their influence is limited. Salafism has weak foundations in Syria, as the majority of Sunni Muslims subscribe to Sufism.’ Many Syrian Muslim Brothers are themselves Salafists, also raising questions about the group’s ability to win wide support in Syrian society, leaving even the violent and sectarian history of the group itself aside.

Over and over, the (Zionist-backed) al-Nusra chief terror umbrella in Syria has—alongside its twin AQI-ISI offshoot ISIS/DAESH—ruthlessly targeted Sufis for assassinations, mass murder, and destruction of shrines.141516

Yes: the very so-called “Islamic revolutionaries” who were fighting in the name of “Islam” against Bashar al-Assad, were the ones deliberately targeting Muslims for purely cruel sadistic slaughter, and it was Assad who protected the true Muslims.

It’s not only Syrian minorities17 (Shi’a,18 Alawites,19 Christians,202122232425 Kurds,26 and Druze27) who are overtly hounded down by the jihadist ape-pig savages of Mossad-unleashed “HTS”: Sunnis have always been targeted (namely under HTS’s precursor form as “Jabhat al-Nusra” and “Jabhat Fateh al-Sham”), just that reporting on this facet is far less widespread because it contradicts the standard “HTS is a Sunni organization that represents Sunnis” narrative flurry abomination.

Right after the Zionist-facilitated HTS coup d’état of Dec. 8, 2024, destroying Assad’s governmental rule over Syria, nascent Syrian resistance formations were established particularly along the western coastal towns and southern region, namely the Syrian Popular Resistance (SPR). Despite feverish outside media reporting to portray SPR as an “Alawite sectarian” organization, they have consistently and emphatically made it clear that their stance is one of Syrian cross-sect unified nationalistic opposition to HTS, which they deem as “Kharijites” who are responsible for shedding the blood not only Shi’a and Christians, but also Sunnis:28

A new group announced its opposition to the Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS)-led interim government.[1] Armed opposition by the group—named the Syrian Popular Resistance—would likely exacerbate sectarian tensions in Syria and even risk driving fissures in the HTS-led coalition. The Syrian Popular Resistance in a statement on December 29 threatened to attack HTS and HTS-affiliated leaders purportedly in response to the killing of Christians, Shia, and Sunnis since overthrowing the Bashar al Assad regime.[2] The Syrian Popular Resistance labeled the HTS-led coalition as ‘Kharijites,’ which derogatorily frames the coalition as heretical.

Additionally, when HTS cynically instrumentalized the old Assad prisons toward repurposing them (hardly any different from how the U.S.-Iranian occupation in Iraq repurposed Saddam’s Abu Ghraib inter alia), among their primary targets were apparently none other than suspected Assad supporters among Sunnis:29

Throughout, there were other detentions from all denominations in the name of security: large numbers of people, many from Syria’s Sunni majority, accused of vague links to Assad; human-rights activists; Christians who say they have been shaken down for information or money; Shi’ites picked up at checkpoints and accused of ties with Iran or Hezbollah.

Prisons and lockups that jailed tens of thousands of people during Assad’s rule are now crowded with Syrians detained by President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s security forces and held without formal charges, a Reuters investigation has found.

Even Great Satanic empirical mouthpiece Reuters, in their coverage of the HTS massacres of Alawites that was plastered over and over with sectarian portrayals of a false “Sunni vs. Alawite” misrepresentation, acknowledged this kernel of reality:30

Many survivors, especially in Baniyas, said they had Sunni neighbors who smuggled them to safety or who tried to protect them.

In Jableh, a Sunni neighbor intervened to help evacuate the mortally wounded husband of Rasha Ghoson, over the objections of two General Security Service men. With her neighbor’s help, an ambulance agreed to take Ghoson’s husband to Latakia, but doctors there couldn’t revive him.

Standing alongside the body in the overflowing morgue, Ghoson said a GSS officer in charge of death records refused to issue a document to an Alawite.

‘He said: “infidel!”’ and walked away, she recalled. Her legs and hands trembled as she recounted the ordeal.

As with most of the massacre victims, there is still no death certificate for Ghoson’s husband.

In a nutshell: whatever outside-conceived notion of a supposed “Sunni vs. Alawite” societal tension within Syria is one that grotesquely assumes Syrian Sunnis are automatically defined and represented by Zionist-contrived anti-Islamic al-Qaeda/ISIS supremacist reactionary ideology, and which is wholly contradicted by the reality within the occupied Levant where everyday Sunnis sought to protect their Alawite neighbors from HTS death squads.

Anyone who still wishes to insist that “Bashar al-Assad was an enemy of Sunnis” must grapple also with this fact: in the 2003-11 invasion and occcupation of Iraq jointly by the Great Satan and Iran, it was Assadist Syria under that so-called “Alawite-led Shi’ite regime” which did more than any other state in sponsoring the Iraqi Sunni Arab Ba’athist resistance against the U.S.-Iranian occupation, and advocating on behalf of disenfranchised Iraqi Sunnis in the face of mass-murderous death squad rampages imperially anointed—jointly so—by the Great Satan and Iran:

Ever heard of this garbage narrative about how “Bashar al-Assad harbored and supported AQI terrorists”? The reason that U.S.-Zionist empirical propagandists en masse disseminated that talking point was precisely because it already grotesquely conflated all Iraqi Sunni Arab resistance to the CPA-Badr occupation as affiliated with or otherwise adjacent to the U.S.-facilitated AQI, and therefore any general support for CPA-Badr systematically persecuted and genocided Iraqi Sunnis was smeared as “support for al-Qaeda terrorists.”

The Ancien Régime is gone, and no plausible hope of its return remains, not even in the likely scenario of a “neo-Assadist insurgency” of former SAA units from Lebanon and Iraq against the imperial Zionists’ HTS abomination, because all that will do is ostensibly remove the HTS bridge between the Zionist entity and Turkey to pave the way for a full-blown “Israel-Turkey War” to trigger the manufactured Sabbatean-Frankist pseudoarmageddon nuclear psyop. As far as I (E.G.) can make of the snowballing dire scenario at the present moment, the best any one of us good-faith-inclined individual human beings can materially do on this particular facet in the present moment is to help people escape and find temporal physical safety before it’s too late. If there’s some way to help Lebanese, Syrian, Iraqi et al. civilians flee, now would be the time to at least sound the warning that bad will descend to worse, and that escape is preferable.

If blossoming human solidarity is going to start somewhere, perhaps a good point of commencement would be to consider the example that has long shined forth from Syria, and give back to their downtrodden and resilient emissaries of empathetic human dignity which they generously poured out to humanity. This means standing with all innocent Syrian human victims of HTS savagery regardless of their “sect” affiliations, whether Sunni, Alawite, Christian, Shi’a, Druze, Kurdish et al., lest they become tragically co-opted and “Anbarized” i.e. by filthy genocidal Zionists.

Now is not the time to continue failing the joint human duty of uplifting the cradle of civilization together—mutual kenotic human solidarity is a necessity.