The complex overlap of confessionalism and multi-military structure in Syria
The conflict that has been tearing Syria apart for a decade has irreversibly changed the country’s security architecture, freeing the monopoly of the use of force from what was once the only recognized holder: the Syrian Armed Forces, under the direct command of President Bashar al-Assad. Over the course of the conflict, a progressive fragmentation of the security landscape has become apparent, with equal impact in the regime loyalist and opposing (or rebel) camps. This has happened mainly for two reasons, both related to the posture adopted by the regime itself: on the one hand, Bashar al-Assad, not enjoying sufficient human strength to support the war effort, has had to co-opt militias and groups funded by his international sponsors, Russia and Iran in particular; on the other hand, the President himself has not been able to control the proliferation of militias and the affirmation of informal security providers, de facto legitimizing them.
The aforementioned militias have been formed especially after the outbreak of the revolution of 2011, following a common dynamic: their origin derives from the will of local groups, often popular committees, in turn the expression of well-defined and structured minorities on the territories, to defend the community of reference. The distribution of the population, however, at the geographical level traditionally develops along sectarian lines, especially for minorities, and especially within the different urban and rural areas. If, in fact, the different confessional components have coexisted peacefully in the last decades on a macroscopic level, making an interpretation of the Syrian civil conflict through the sole sectarian key insufficient, the level of conflict within the single areas, therefore on a microscopic level, is quite different and more influenced by identity and sectarian factors. This, combined with the instability in which the country has been since 2011, contributes substantially to the increase of sectarian cohesion and the revulsion against the “other”, often perceived as dangerous. An emblematic example is represented by the villages of Deraa and Suwayda, south of Damascus; the first is a reality with a Sunni majority and opposed to the regime, while the second has a Druze majority and is traditionally loyalist. The violence inflicted by some Sunni militants coming from Deraa on the inhabitants of Suwayda have led to the formation of the militia called Jaysh al-Muwahhidin (“The army of the monotheists” - term traditionally used to indicate the Druze community) that, starting from its name, clearly defines itself through a confessional key - that is, Druze. The militia has assumed an even more prominent position following the heinous attacks inflicted by ISIL in Suwayda, after which a Druze delegation turned to Damascus asking the regime for help. Such support, however, was denied since the Druze had previously refused to fight in the pro-Iranian militias close to the regime. This certainly heightened the importance of the armed group as the sole guarantor of village security, while stimulating a narrative increasingly based on sectarian and confessional assumptions, observable from the visual aspect, with the creation and proliferation of flags and logos religiously connoted, as well as the formation of special groups and pages on social networks. At a critical moment for Syrian national identity, rediscovering another identity, based on local communities and religious factors, provided the basis for greater identity awareness, which until then had been less evident in Syria than in neighboring Lebanon and Iraq.
This rhetoric, moreover, has been instrumentally incentivized by the narrative that Assad himself has built around the conflict in the country since the first protests broke out in March 2011. In fact, the Syrian President initially tried to delegitimize them, designating them as a manifestation of Sunni extremism in the country against minorities. Moreover, Assad himself has institutionalized the process of formation and legitimization of militias as security providers, giving recognition to Alawite militias, later called Shabiha (“ghosts”), paramilitary groups deputed to protect Alawite and, in some cases, Christian communities. In this case too, it is often a bottom-up phenomenon: for example, in Daher al-Magher, a district with an Alawite majority in Salamiya, the popular committee (al-Lijan al-Shaabiya) has turned into a real armed Shabiha thanks also to the support provided by the regime, following the violence carried out by extremist groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra or ISIL. The action of the Shabiha in Salamiya towards components belonging to different confessions has further strengthened the confessional dividing lines.
Salamiya offers an important example of the dynamics that can be observed in Syria as a whole: despite the presence of the Alawite community of Daher al-Magher, the main component of the population of the village is of Ismailite denomination, a current of Shiite Islam. The Ismailite community of Salamiya has been subjected to violence and massacres by ISIL, without the regime showing any interest or inclination to provide for the security of what until then had proved to be a loyalist component. This and other developments, not least the mutual attacks between Alawite and Sunni groups in Salamiya itself, resulted in the Ismailite community also increasingly turning in on itself, again giving rise to a strongly sectarian feeling of solidarity. In the case of the Ismailite community, the militias created to ensure security, although supported by the regime in Damascus, did not obtain the legitimacy of the Ismailite High Council and, consequently, were not accepted or supported in a uniform way by the community they aimed to represent, which is also internally variegated by political tendency.
Similar evolutions have been observed within the areas with a Christian majority as well, both in the loyalist groups and in those opposed to the regime, often following the sub-confessional divisions existing in the Eastern Christian communities: Catholics, Chaldeans, Greek Melkites, Greek Orthodox, are just some of the many forms of Christianity observable in the Middle Eastern panorama and, specifically, in Syria. For example, in the valley of Wadi al-Nasara, in the region of Homs, with a Greek Melkite and Greek Orthodox majority and generally loyal to Assad, confessional militias have been formed, aimed, as in the cases described above, at the protection of local communities, in collaboration with the Shabiha close to the regime. Another loyalist militia, concentrated in Qamishli, in the northeast of the country, and of Syriac denomination, is the Sootoro militia, also known as the Office for the Protection of Syriacs.
On the other hand, within the opposition there are several armed groups that are distinctly Christian: the SUP Sutoro, located in al-Qahtaniya, al-Hasakah and al-Malikiya (northeast), aims at protecting the local population against the regime of Damascus through the recruitment of young volunteers from the communities themselves and has very close ties with the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD). Another important militia is the Syriac Military Council of al-Hasakah. Starting from the video announcing its creation, the SMC stressed the need to defend the Christian-Syrian population of Syria, its rights and its cultural and historical heritage, an ambition destined to match the fight against ISIL with the latter’s advance towards al-Hasakah.
What emerges, therefore, is a crucial element: in the context of instability and lack of security, each community has equipped itself with groups that could protect it from external attacks. The narratives employed are also remarkably similar to those observable within the best known pro-Iranian militias, such as the use of religious symbols in logos, pseudo-propaganda images and flags, the celebratory depiction of martyrs, the use of alphabets, such as Syriac, Assyrian or Aramaic, now closely linked to a confessional identity, as well as the extensive use of social media.
The Sunni community, traditionally associated with the opposition and denounced as “terrorist” by the pro-Assad front, is often seen as a threat by the other Syrian religious components, mainly for two reasons: on the one hand, Sunnis represent the majority of the Syrian population and therefore, trivially, they enjoy a demographic imbalance in their favor and, consequently, a numerically superior human force compared to all other confessions. Precisely for this reason, the size of the Sunni community, scattered throughout the Syrian territory, has facilitated the birth of very heterogeneous and different groups, especially in the degree of extremism adopted and in the religious connotation assigned. Moreover, the fragmentation of the Syrian territory and the collapse of the State have made Syria a magnet for global jihadist movements, as had already happened previously in Iraq. If, therefore, it is true that ISIL and al-Qaeda, and their affiliates, are groups with a markedly extremist Sunni identity, it is also true that in the Syrian panorama there are non-extremist Sunni groups devoted to mere community defense or individuals of Sunni origin organized in secular groups, just as it is true that the feeling of oppression felt by the Sunni community has led some groups to perpetrate violence against other religious groups, especially those loyal to the regime. The heterogeneity of the Sunni component in Syrian society, as well as the presence of extremist groups, have facilitated Damascus’ adoption of the rhetoric described above, fostering the emergence of a strong anti-Sunni fear on the part of religious minorities, and contributing in turn to fuel the fire of sectarianism. This phenomenon has both direct and indirect consequences: for the former, one should recall the massacres perpetrated by Shabiha close to the regime against Sunni civilian communities, such as the one in Houla on May 25, 2012, when 108 civilians were killed. At an indirect level, however, there are various derivations that can be observed: for example, during the conflict cities like Idlib and Aleppo, once characterized by a high rate of confessional heterogeneity, have recorded large flows of emigration from the Christian, Druze and Alawite components, due to the lack of trust between religious communities. In the medium term, this will tend to reinforce the Sunni predominance of the aforementioned cities and, at the same time, reinvigorate the character of, for example, Christian, Druze or Alawite destinations: predominantly Wadi al-Nasara or the northeast for Christians, the coast for Alawites, Suwayda and the southern region for Druze. In turn, such a development could make the observable dividing lines between the various communities even sharper, again underscoring the fragmentation of Syrian society.
The proliferation of militias defined along sectarian lines saw a major breakthrough with the intervention of external sponsors in the Syrian conflict, starting in 2014. Indeed, in addition to regionalizing the conflict and increasing its size exponentially, external support has also influenced the development of local militias, especially financially and militarily. International actors, in fact, supported local groups in order to achieve broader geopolitical goals within Syria and the Middle East region, yet emphasizing sectarian rifts in various ways. First, the support of external sponsors provided an additional layer of legitimacy to local militias. Secondly, the delivery of weapons and financial support has made them more assertive in their actions, which in some cases have moved away from mere community defense, even undertaking offensive operations with strong sectarian overtones.
Data regarding foreign support to militias, with the exception of Shiite militias linked to Iran, are few and fragmentary: nevertheless, available information allow at least to identify the main connections between international actors and local militias.
As far as the Druze community is concerned, there are clear links with influential personalities in the Lebanese Druze political component, starting from Walid Jumblatt, member of the Lebanese Parliament and leader of the Progressive Social Party, strongly opposed to the Damascus regime. Equally important is Wi’am Wahhab, Jumblatt’s opponent in the Lebanese Druze political scene and supporter of Assad. Wahhab is present in support of some loyalist Druze militias, which revolve around his Arab Party of Tawhid (“monotheism”, with reference to the Druze community). Also, Israel would have tried to co-opt the Druze community, especially the one located near the Golan Heights, in the province of Quneitra, offering protection to the villages through the deployment of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
The loyalist militias belonging to the Alawite, Ismailite and Christian communities receive support from the regime in Damascus and its external sponsors, Russia and Iran in primis, in an unofficial way. In this context, it is worth noting the strong ties between the Wadi Nasara militias and Russia, whose narratives often border on sectarian rhetoric, given their common Orthodox faith. Since its intervention in Syria (2015), Moscow has attempted to stand in defense of the Christian communities of the East, so much so that it has financed the construction of churches, as recently happened for the reproduction of Hagia Sofia that will rise in the coming years in Hama. It is no coincidence, then, that the Russian Orthodox Church, close to both the Kremlin and the Syrian Orthodox Church, has legitimized the Russian intervention in the Syrian conflict as a “holy war” against ISIL.
On the other hand, some militias opposed to the regime, such as the Syriac Military Council and SUP Sootoro, are part of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the coalition supported by the United States and many Western countries. Being part of the anti-ISIL coalition, they enjoy the support of some Western countries: they receive training, especially in counter-terrorism, and weapons from the American, French and British armies, for example. Contributing to the fight against the Islamic State, consequently, is connoted both as a defense of one’s own community and as a vehicle for the recognition of one’s own community within the Syrian landscape. The Syriac Military Council, like other Syriac militias, also enjoys the explicit support of the European Syriac Union, an organization that aims at preserving Syriac identity and helping Syriac believers in the Middle East. The latter has played an important role in guaranteeing US support to the militia through advocacy actions in Europe, further underlining the Christian and Syriac nature of the armed group.
Although with different modalities and degrees of involvement, Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have provided military and financial support to Sunni-majority opposition groups, exploiting their role as predominantly Sunni countries in an instrumental way to pursue their own objectives in Syria and the Middle East, especially in an anti-Iranian key or in the context of the struggle for the domination of the regional Sunni front. Some sources point to the financial support that all three actors would give to Ahrar al-Sham, a Salafist jihadist formation engaged for decades in the fight against the “tyrannical Alawite regime” of Assad, which collaborates with the Free Syrian Army and is at the head of the Syrian Islamic Front, a microcosm of Islamist armed resistance militias against the Assad regime.
Saudi Arabia has directed most of its aid in the direction of Jaysh al-Islam (“the Army of Islam”), a Sunni militia that carries out overtly sectarian narratives and in opposition to ISIL, now contained within the Islamic Front umbrella. Riyadh has leveraged the United States, with the aim of providing anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles to the militia, but also Jordan, which has allowed its territory to be used as a military supply route for the Jaysh al-Islam. The latter also has ties with Turkey and Qatar, although the details are less well known. In general, Turkey and Qatar have aligned their efforts in Syria, supporting much of the microcosm of Islamist militias, especially those ideologically close to the Muslim Brotherhood; Ankara, specifically, has provided training, while Qatar has provided funding and weapons, delivered via numerous flights to Turkey.
The most striking and systematically applied case is, finally, that of the Shiite militias. The indigenous Shiite groups have been, since the beginning of the conflict, limited in number, with about 3500-5000 total personnel at the beginning of the war and 8000-12000 currently. The increase of local fighters is mainly motivated by the incentives offered by the external sponsors, Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah, in exchange for enlistment: first of all, higher cash rewards than the average observable among militias in the country, but also access to welfare networks similar to those observable in Shiite-majority areas in Lebanon, for example, where the “Party of God” offers health care, food supply and various services. Adopting these incentives, since mid-2013 Iran has transformed Syrian Shiite militias, primarily included in the Damascene network of Liwa Abu Fadl al-Abbas and often arising following the community protection dynamic mentioned above, into rapid response armed groups ideologically affiliated with the Islamic Republic, while also reinforcing them with militiamen from other countries. The degree of commitment and the systematic way in which Tehran has carried out this process, making it the fulcrum of its strategy in Syria, also thanks to its past experiences in Lebanon and Iraq, makes the Shiite case an emblematic example of the importance that external intervention has had in creating and strengthening militias along confessional lines in Syria. The Syrian Shiites, whose militias today call themselves Hezbollah fi Suriya (Hezbollah in Syria), represent only 1-2% of the Syrian population, but they have played a disproportionate role in the conflict thanks to the external intervention that, as typical in the Iranian modus operandi, has vigorously followed sectarian dividing lines to achieve wider goals.
In light of the considerations made up to now, in many areas of Syria the emergence of a multi-military structure, within which there are several security providers responsible for the protection of the various local communities, both making up for the shortcomings of the governmental Armed Forces in loyalist areas, and reacting to the blows launched by the latter in areas of opposition to the regime. As we have seen, it is a bottom-up phenomenon which, however, has received legitimacy, albeit indirectly, both from Damascus and from international actors intervening in the country for wider geopolitical aims.
Such a structured security architecture inevitably contributes to the deep fragmentation of what remains of Syrian society, preventing at the same time the creation of political phases of territorial rapprochement or détente between communities. The consequences of such a conformation of the security landscape could reinforce sectarian and confessional lines, in a society already strongly divided into pro- and anti-regime factions. This status quo risks creating fractures that cannot be ignored in the future, if only because of the fragmentation of the power centers recognized by the various communities. This could force Assad to relegate part of the authority to local representatives, and therefore to the aforementioned militias, making the Syrian security landscape extremely chaotic.
Although part of civil society is opposed to sectarianism and does not recognize these developments as sectarian, fueling distrust between different confessional groups will make minorities reluctant to return to their places of residence, reinforcing the sectarian homogeneity of cities and regions. Weapons acquired from outside powers, as well as ties established with them, will not vanish with the formal end of the conflict, nor will the militias themselves and the community feeling created during the years of war. The conflict in Syria and the intervention of outside powers have long watered the seeds of sectarianism, putting the very idea of Syrian national identity at risk in the long run. The most immediate and concrete risk is linked to the magmatic and deeply fragmented social context, with particular reference to the security dimension, that makes the foundations of a possible united Syria fragile in the near future even before they are formally laid.
