Recent Massacres by Syrian Army Perpetrated to Establish Security for the New Alawite State

Note the massacres at Sunni villages right outside the Alawite heartland

Now Lebanon recently came out with a very interesting article arguing that the Assad regime's recent massacres in the Sunni villages of of al-Qubayr, Houla and Kfar-Zayta were designed as a kind of ethnic cleansing to ensure the security of the planned Alawite fallback strategy of a separate Alawite state within Syria.  The article, by columnist Tony Badran, argues that the Assad regime has been planning for some time to fall back to the Alawite heartland along the Mediterranean coast in case Damascus falls to the Sunni rebels.  In this regard, the massacres by Alawite army units of the Assad regime were designed to provide "breathing space" for the Alawite areas of Lakatia and Tartous along the coast.  Badran's article notes:

"To better understand Assad’s thinking, it’s important to situate these attacks in the larger context of the regime’s operations and the logic that’s been driving them. Like al-Qubayr, Houla possesses two important characteristics. On the one hand, it is adjacent to Alawite villages, from which the attacks were launched. On the other hand, these villages (and one could add Kfar Zayta to the list) straddle the eastern edge of the traditional region of Alawite concentration, along the north-south meridian that runs from Jisr al-Shughour in the north to Tel Kalakh in the south."

As I noted in a previous post, it has been evident for some time that Assad has turned the Syrian conflict into a sectarian war between the Sunni majority and the Alawite minority who hold the levers of power within the regime.  While the final outcome of the Syrian civil war (and let's call it what it is, a sectarian Sunni-Alawite civil war in Syria) is uncertain, the Assad regime clearly does not intend to leave the scene even if Damascus falls.  Here is the Now Lebanon article.