Five months after their liberation from a dictatorship, most Syrians seem glad for one thing. Their country, despite predictions of it splintering into religious and ethnic parts, is still a country. For half a century, the authoritarian Assad family justified its harsh rule as the only way to keep a diverse Syria intact.
Yes, Israel has now taken control of chunks of Syrian territory. Other powers from Iran to Turkey to Russia want to direct the future of this pivotal Middle East nation toward their own interests. And twice in the last two months, serious violence by the country’s dominant Sunni Muslim Arabs has erupted against two minorities, the Druze and the Alawites.
Still, “If we look at the full picture,” Syria analyst Ghassan Ibrahim told Arab News, the absence of large-scale sectarian violence since the Dec. 8 liberation is “something promising, but requires a lot of work.”
Much of that work has been done by local activists reviving the relative coexistence that long prevailed in local communities between Sunnis, Druze, Christians, and other groups. During the 2011 uprising against the Assad regime, protesters chanted, “One, one, one! The Syrian people are one!” Many people particularly dislike a system of quotas in neighboring Iraq and Lebanon that divvies up government power by demographic groups, which has led to corruption.
“I hope that Syria will set a new precedent … with a system that recognizes and represents differences politically, to break with this false alternative between oppressive unity and destructive factionalism,” Syria expert Peter Harling of the research company Synaps told the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
After the recent bouts of violence in Druze and Alawite communities, local players and the government of interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa acted to calm tensions. Druze fighters were enlisted as members of Syria’s security forces to patrol their areas. Compensation has been promised to victims and justice to attackers. In Alawite villages after deadly attacks in March, a series of local meetings have brought together Sunnis and Alawites to repair misunderstandings and bring accountability to killers.
“If there is a mistake, we correct it together,” Hind Kabawat, the new minister for social affairs and labor, told The New York Times. “We learn together and we empower each other.”
