The stunning downfall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad leaves not merely a vacuum of power in that country but a nearly endless list of unanswered questions. One of the most significant concerns the fate and future of the minority Alawite community, from which Assad and his inner circle hailed. The Assad dictatorship began when Bashar's father, Hafez, seized control of the country in 1970. The government that Bashar inherited upon his father's death in 2000 was nominally Baathist, a socialist and pan-Arab ideology, but the heart of the regime has always been-and, more important, perceived as-a communal Alawite project at the expense of the Syrian Sunni majority.
Alawism is an offshoot of Shiite Islam, but the faith has been considered heretical almost unanimously by both Sunni and Shiite clerical authorities since it emerged in the ninth century. The Alawites accordingly became an insular, tightly knit, and often secretive group struggling to survive in their northeastern Syrian coastal and mountain homelands.
Still, Alawites became something of a favored minority under the French. They were strongly encouraged to join, and heavily promoted within, the developing Syrian military. In 1970, Hafez al-Assad, an air-force general, seized power and imposed the highly repressive political system that lasted until this weekend.
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