The creation of an Alawi-minority coastal canton is a sine qua non for cutting the Gordian knot that is the Syrian conflict, argues Eric Kaufmann.
Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama emerged from talks this week predictably far apart on the question of Bashar Al-Assad’s future. Russia wants him to remain as their client, recognising him as the country’s leader. Britain and the US say he will never be accepted by a majority of Syrians, who want him to go. What neither side will countenance is the only feasible option: dividing the country into separate ethno-sectarian cantons.
Putin and Obama agree on the need to take on ISIL. But doing so now, when the war has come to be defined as Sunni versus Alawi – and other minorities – will only feed Sunni resentment and bolster the popularity of ISIL. A key first step is to create two arenas: one a coastal strip dominated by Alawis, Christians and sections of the urban middle classes; the other a Sunni zone, much of which is already controlled by opposition groups. Only with a safe and defensible canton will Alawis be willing to see Assad fall. Once the Sunni zone has been established, the West can assist ISIL’s opponents without bolstering Assad or conferring legitimacy on IS.
In other words, intervention only becomes possible with the creation of a federal Syria operating under a power-sharing, or consociational, system.
Western policymakers and intellectuals have always been allergic to partition or ethnic power-sharing because the idea that politics should be based around ethnicity and sect cuts against cherished ideals of Enlightenment ‘civic’ nationhood. This ideal collided with ethnic reality in the former Yugoslavia, and the result has been the de facto ethnic cantonisation of Bosnia and Kosovo. Had the West been less stubborn, many lives could have been saved.
So too today. The creation of an Alawi-minority coastal canton is a sine qua non for cutting the Gordian knot that is the Syrian conflict. Kurdish, Alawi and Sunni federal units should maintain their defensive capabilities as long as mutual distrust remains high. No one pretends that power-sharing societies like Lebanon, Bosnia, Northern Ireland or Iraq are bastions of inter-ethnic comity. However, those that criticise its shortcomings should compare current arrangements against likely alternatives, not sunlit utopian uplands or a prelapsarian innocence. We must remember that, like democracy itself, ethnic power-sharing is the least worst option when a deeply-divided country has descended into ethnic conflict.
Over time, as Brendan O’Leary and John McGarry remark, power-sharing institutions based on ethnicity or sect will ‘biodegrade’. That is, as the underlying mistrust and ethnic separatism upon which ethnic power-sharing is based fade, a more ecumenical and civic understanding of nationhood can emerge, with unitary institutions replacing consociational ones.
Some aver that power-sharing entrenches ethnic division, but this puts the cart of politics before the horse of social change. In the Netherlands, power-sharing arrangements between Catholic, Protestant, socialist and liberal segments decayed in the 1960s when these identities lost their relevance. In the Canadian province of Newfoundland, the denomination-based system for allocating government posts also disappeared in the 60s, and the province’s citizens voted out separate schools for Catholics and Protestants in 1998.
When a country has been rent by violent conflict along ethno-sectarian lines, the first imperative is to divide the combatants into safe and defensible political units under their own democratic governance. Inter-ethnic mixing and liberal nationhood is a nice-to-have, and should only arrive when populations are secure and ready to yield power to the centre.
The migrant crisis in Europe has led to frantic calls for some kind of ‘action’ against ISIL. Obama and Putin agree on little, but both are wedded to the dangerous fiction that Syria should remain a unitary state while ISIL is attacked. Yet these are precisely the obstacles to a solution. Attacking ISIL in the name of a united Syria under Assad’s control is a recipe for disaster which can only prolong the tragedy that is today’s Syria.
Eric Kaufmann is Professor of Politics at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is an editor of Political Demography (Oxford, 2012) and author of a Demos report, freely available, entitled Changing Places: the White British response to ethnic change.
Anand,
I understand your concerns but I am not advocating separate states with seats at the UN, but rather a de facto partition under the umbrella of a federal Syria. This need not involve group-based consociationalism except insofar as the leader of the federation should rotate among the three federal units and resources be allocated proportionally. In Bahrain I think consociationalism would be better than the minority-domination that exists now. Again, I don’t advocate separate states, but power-sharing which recognizes ethnicity and sect are now the basis of politics in the region. Syria will come to resemble something between Iraq (pre-ISIL) and Lebanon whether we like it or not, and that is much better than what is going on now.
In Syria, the main candidates for federal units are 1) a Kurdish zone in the north; 2) a Sunni religious zone inland; and 3) a mixed coastal zone with Alawi, Christian and some urban Sunni representation. The mixed nature of #3 should protect non-Alawi minorities there. #2 will be under US-Saudi-Turkish tutelage – especially after driving out ISIS – and so pressure can be brought to bear to protect the few non-Sunnis there. Finally in #1, the experience of Iraqi Kurdistan is relatively encouraging as regards minorities, though not perfect.
Dear Eric,
I’ve been conducting post-doctoral research about the Syrian conflict here at LSE. From my understanding of the country, where I also lived some years at different times and phases of Bashar Assad’s rule, the situation in Syria which you present sounds rather different to the dynamics as I understand them. I am eager to read the research upon which it is based.
I noticed that you have conducted collaborative research about the so called White British population’s attitudes to minorities and immigration, based on 20 years of longitudinal studies which you compared with a number of other contextual studies. You examined 24 studies on the subject, and sampled 44 papers. You make nuanced and cautious conclusions, and warn that rapid changes may produce effects opposite to those they were intended to have.
With Syria you draw some strong conclusions and advocate a rather dramatic ethnic canton partition policy, and suggest that those who believe otherwise are naïve. You make some strong statements such as: ‘Only with a safe and defensible canton will Alawis be willing to see Assad fall.’ I would very much like to read the research you have conducted with the Alawi community in Syria, upon which this statement is based. To my knowledge academic research which considers this population’s views has yet to be conducted. Please share this with us, I hope it’s as rigorous as your work with the White British population in London.
You also say that: Once the Sunni zone has been established, the West can assist ISIL’s opponents without bolstering Assad or conferring legitimacy on IS.
Could you explain the logic on which this is based, i.e. how support for ISIL’s opponents, such as civil society, local governance structures, and local brigades of the FSA, provides legitimacy for ISIL, and bolster’s Assad?
The examples of The Netherlands and Canada are given to support the assumption that ethnic/confessional systems will ‘biodegrade’. Oddly the durable confessional system in Lebanon is ignored in this calculation, as is the communal system which contributed to recent communal bloodshed in Iraq. Many scholars of the Middle East remark on the problems this has caused in Lebanese society, its contribution to sectarian divisions. The preservation of the confessional system did nothing to arrest the war economy which emerged during the country’s long sectarian civil war – and having a confessional system did nothing to prevent the war. The institutionalisation of communal politics in neighbouring Iraq after 2003 helped to create and exacerbate communal violence. It is only in the areas Kurdistan Regional Government that this has not been the case, yet it is now under siege by the continuation of sectarian conflict in the country. The policy you advocate raises the question: why are examples from The Netherlands and Newfoundland in the 1960s appropriate supporting evidence for an ethnic canton policy in Syria, but the recent examples of Syria’s neighbours, are not appropriate counter-evidence?
You also say that the ethno-sectarian canton policy is the only feasible option to end the conflict. I do not see it this way, after the research I have conducted so far on the conflict. Can you explain how the policy you advocate will address the political economy of war which appears to be sustaining the conflict? How might this help to arrest or dismantle these systems? And how might the canton system resolve the long standing problem of institutional bottleneck dysfunctions which recent research by a Syrian team in Damascus noted has made a significant contribution to the crisis?
Your policy solution raises some questions, and it would be interesting to learn of the academic work it on which it is based.
There is no doubt that what you are saying makes a lot of sense for Syria, however I worry about the implications for the unstable and indeed stable neighbouring countries. In a country like Iraq, where ISIS is obviously a problem, they are stirring up racial hatred in order to destabilise the country. If we then use Syria as an example of what can happen if different sects and tribes participate in racial violence, I then worry about the implications for countries such as Iraq. Do we then set a precedent for the Kurds in Iraq, that if they fight hard enough against the government, they will get their own state? In more stable countries like Bahrain or Saudi Arabia, home to many different sects of Islam and tribes which often differ from their ruing families, will we then set a precedent for them too? I do agree that what you say makes a lot of sense however I believe that when we talk about intervention within, we ought to consider not only the implications on Syria but also the entire region.