Bhopinder Singh | The collapse of Assad’s Syria to have sectarian consequences
Way back in 2004, King Abdullah of Jordan had coined a controversial and loaded term called the “Shia Crescent”, that indicated land and territory from Shia-dominated Iran running across the Iraqi-Syrian swathes up to the southern coast of Lebanon. The subsequent fall of Saddam Hussein’s Sunni-led Iraq to Shia forces, along with the successful negation of both Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, or ISIS, by Iran-led Shia militias and the assertive rise of the Yemeni Houthis, the Hezbollah of Lebanon and like-minded groups, almost confirmed a geographical crescent-like shift of power from Sunni sheikdoms to Shia forces. The steady presence of Alawite (Shia offshoot) Syrian President Bashar al-Assad further reiterated the portents of King Abdullah’s feared sectarian shift.
Civilisational tensions between the Sunni-Shia rift played out thereafter with Iran emerging as the rallying fount of the Shia uprising, to the consternation of the wary and predominantly Sunni-led sheikhdoms. Relations deteriorated to such an extent that despite paying homilies towards the beleaguered Palestinians in the face of disproportionate and brutal Israeli revenge, Jordan almost openly supported the Israeli forces as it shot down the Iranian drones targeting Israel. Since the time Israel launched the relentless bludgeoning of the Gaza Strip and southern Lebanon, the Sunni Arab leadership has played coy and mealy-mouthed, and it was left to Iran and its proxies like Hezbollah, the Houthis and the forces of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad to offer a modicum of defiance.
Cut to twenty years after Jordanian King Abdullah’s sectarian fear-mongering of the “Shia Crescent” in 2024 -- Iranian elements have been attacked, almost all of the top Hezbollah leadership assassinated, the Houthis routinely attacked, and perhaps most dramatically, the Syrian nation under Bashar al-Assad has collapsed. This dramatic ouster of Syria’s President comes approximately fifty-five years after his father, Hafez al-Assad, had taken over in 1971. He was sensitive to the sectarian undercurrents and had knowingly ensured that the control of the Syrian military, intelligence, bureaucracy and key security posts were given to his fellow Shia-Alawite brethren only.
Naturally, the Syrian state under the Assad clan had a reflexive bonhomie with the fellow Shia Iran, and as the Arab sheikdoms were aligned to the United States, the Syrians forged a rebound relationship with the Soviet Union (later Russia). All these contrarian positions and alignments militated with Syria’s neighbours like Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, as also with the other staunch US ally in the region, namely Israel. The Sunni-Arab side were out to avenge the Syrian defiance and strategic alliances by supporting dissent and sectarian tensions in Syria, to the extent of supporting Sunni extremist militias like Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, that is believed to be the principal group behind the capitulation of the Assad regime a few days back. Tellingly, the HTS has its origins in Al-Qaeda (that was earlier in the forefront of facing Shia forces in the region) and is backed in its recent endeavour by the support of Turkish-backed Syrian Sunni militias, collectively called the Syrian National Army. Expectedly, the rout of Bashar al-Assad’s citadel in Damascus has led to the retreat of the supporting Hezbollah fighters to their bases in the mountains and Lebanon, just as many from the Bashar al-Assad’s Army have fled and crossed over in droves to neighbouring Iraq (led by Shia Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ Al Sudani).
The revised landscape in the region with the targeted diminishment of Iran and its regional proxies like Hezbollah in Lebanon or the Houthis in Yemen, and now with the Sunni-militia takeover in Syria, will have serious repercussions on the deeply polarised sectarian sentiments. The Shias are estimated to be around 15 per cent of the global Ummah (Muslim community), with a majority only in Iran, Iraq, Azerbaijan and Bahrain, out of the 50-odd Muslim countries in the world. Even in India, the Shia numbers are around the same percentage and the unspoken and historical tensions with the Sunnis is unmistakable, if generally controlled. However, in neighbouring Pakistan and Afghanistan, they are violently, routinely, and systematically persecuted. Many Sunni supremacists go as far as declaring Shias apostates and non-Muslims.
The fall of Bashar al-Assad’s Syria is one more blow to Iran and its conflated Shia ambitions, and thus to the imminent danger to the minority Shias across the world.
The political leadership in the region has always been the key to check the sectarian “other” in the regional tinderbox. The Sunni House of Khalifa, which controls Bahrain, has managed to checkmate the Shia majority, just as Bashar al-Assad’s minority Shia Alawite sect had countenanced its Sunni majority till quite recently. In the complex and diverse Lebanese nation, the Shia Hezbollah had managed to carve out a space and relevance for itself in the south, in the face of rival groups from the Christian, Sunni or even Druze denominations. Now, all these levers and counter-levers will get undone and rearranged, to the detriment and disadvantage of the Shia populace.
At the end of the day, it was the combined vilification, the process of “enemising” and seemingly coordinated efforts of the United States, Israel, the Arab sheikhdoms and Turkey that led to Bashar al-Assad’s ouster. While he was hardly any benign or liberal leader himself, it is unlikely that Abu Mohammed al- Jolani (an internationally declared terrorist with $10 million on his head), whose HTS was mainly behind the Syrian regime’s utter collapse, will be any better or more tolerant. But it is the grave risk to Shias across the world that is most disconcerting.
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