Giovanni Rachello History and Future: Revival and Rise of the Syrian Minorities in the Syrian Civil War Exam paper of Storia dei Paesi Islamici Prof. Pejman Abdolmohammadi Master degree in scienze storiche A.A. 2019/2020 Index: 1. Introduction 2. The Syrian minorities: the legacy of the Ottoman empire and their behaviour towards the regime 2.1. The Syrian minorities: recognition problems in Syria after the fall of the Ottoman empire until the rise of Hazif Al-Assad 2.2. The Syrian minorities under the Assad regime 3. The civil war 3.1. Background 3.2. The consequences of emigration: rebalancing the ethnic and religious composition of Syria 3.3. The Kurdish problem and the Kurdish solution: an ethnic minority in a sectarian and political conflict 4. The National Defence Forces: a strategic and political place for Iran, Hezbollah and the Syrian minorities 4.1. The foreign influence of Iran and Hezbollah 4.2. The role of the minorities in the National Defence Forces 1. Introduction The main purpose of this paper is the will to investigate which have been since the beginning of the Syrian civil war until now the role of the ethnic and religious minorities of Syria in the conflict and the influence of the Islamic Republic of Iran over these minorities around their organization in the National Defence Forces, promoted by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), with the support of the Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad, and of the Lebanese Hezbollah. The main observation will lead to the importance and position of strength achieved by some minoritarian groups during the civil war and, in particular, against the Islamic State with the help of Iranian agents and the future possibilities of these minorities in the Assad regime. Other questions will treat about the possibilities of the reintegration of Syria in the international scenario, dealing with the Kurdish problem and the balance of power in Middle East, treating the influence of foreign powers, like Russia and the USA. Some paragraphs will delignate the general lines by which minorities have been treated in Syria under the rule of the former president Hazif Al-Assad, with some reflection on the past rule of France and of the Ottoman Empire. The main sources that I used for my study are the books of the Italian expert of Islamic history Massimo Campanini Storia del Medio Oriente contemporaneo, I Sunniti alle origini dello stato islamico, and Lo scisma della mezzaluna, written with the collaboration of Stefano Torelli. Other important literary sources are Islamic State, the Digital Caliphate of Awan Abdel Bari, published by the California University Press, and the paper of Belge and Karakoç Minorities in the Middle East: Ethnicity, Religion, and Support for Authoritarianism. Reports by some online newspaper have provided useful information, to which must be added the data reported by the Encyclopaedia Britannica. These data have been particularly useful to explicit some demographic factors that involve the Syrian minorities and the role of the phenomenon of emigration of the refugees that have been analysed only for what directly concerns the Syrian situation and other countries of the Middle East. A Work focused on the migration of the refugees in the western country could be useful to integrate the paragraph I dedicated to it. 2. The Syrian minorities: the legacy of the Ottoman empire and their behaviour towards the regime 2.1. The Syrian minorities: recognition problems in Syria after the fall of the Ottoman empire until the rise of Hazif Al-Assad The Assad family itself comes from one the most important minorities of Syrian, which is the one of the Alawites, a Shia sect group settled in the west of the country, between the Mediterranean Sea, Turkey and Lebanon and whose principal urban centres are Baniyas, Latakia and Tartu. The Alawites are known for being at the limit of a heretical sect of Islam, especially for the Sunni, which are a majority in Syria, a sort of hybrid religion of Islam and Christianism despite their statement of being Shi’i Muslims. From their point of view probably they can be considered the most radical of the Shi’i since they follow the doctrine of Ali and think that he was the incarnation of God himself. Until the rise of Hazif Al-Assad the Alawites were persecuted in Syria and only with the recognition by the Lebanese Imam Musa Sadr, who endorsed Hazif’s legitimacy of being the president of the Arab republic of Syria, since it was necessary for the head of state to be Muslim, the situation changed1. From this moment, even after the mysterious death of Sadr in Libya in 19782, the Alawites stopped being persecuted and exercised their new power especially in the military and intelligence ranks of Assad’s Syria, while the Sunni majority was limited but not excluded by minor political institutions3. Beside the Alawites we find the Druze, another minor hybrid sect born in the time of the sixth Fatimid caliph al-Ḥākim bi-Amr Allāh, and which represents a subsect of Isma’ili Shi’ism4. The Christians compose the remaining part of the minoritarian religious groups, divided in various confessions, from the Roman Catholicism to Greek orthodoxy and the Maronites, belonging to the great cities of Damascus and Aleppo. The smallest part is compost by atheist and non-religious5. It is interesting to observe how during the France mandate, since 1920 to 1936, the Muslim religious minorities of Syrian were granted a sort of autonomy and tolerance but then it was suspended for the pressure of the Syrian nationalist movement in 1936. When independence came in 1946 the heterodox Muslim, such as Alawites, Druzes and Kurds, had no group rights for being a minority but were treated just like the non-Muslims. This practice collided with the Ottoman one during the empire, which granted and recognized some autonomy and self-governance to the Muslim linguistic and sectarian groups. Also the western nations were more focused, during their intern-war mandate, on the rights of non-Muslims and as a result, the new States of the middle east developed the same attitude towards them and were reluctant to recognize the Muslim minorities as separate communities. This trend can be recognized in almost any part of the past Ottoman empire as its legacy and in Syria we can see it applied on Alawites, Druzes and Kurds6. In general, for the major part of the Middle east, it has been seen by Karakoc and Belge how the non-Muslims have been able to maintain their autonomy in field as education, family law and religious affairs, while the Muslims sectarian (and maybe heterodox) minorities where treated as part of the majority as well, without any kind of special treatment. An ulterior wight over the underrepresentation of the Muslim minorities is the economic background. The linguistic minorities, such as Kurds, come, generally, from a rural and marginalized area of the economy, which does not contribute to their recognition by the institutions. Moreover, the general picture of the middle east is that in which several installed regimes did not allow free elections. This is also the case of Syria, where the streak of coups after the independence first and then the Assad regime did not permit any kind of political participation of the minorities in general, since all the power was in the hand of the Bath party. 1 Atwa, A. B., Islamic State. The Digital Caliphate, University of California Press, Oakland, California, 2015, p. 71 Campanini M., Lo scisma della mezzaluna. Sunniti e sciiti, la lotta per il potere, ISPI-Mondadori, 2017, p. 88 3 https://www.britannica.com/place/Syria 4 https://www.britannica.com/topic/Druze 5 https://www.britannica.com/place/Syria 6 Belge C. e Karakoç E., Minorities in the Middle East: Ethnicity, Religion, and Support for Authoritarianism in Political Research Quarterly, vol. 68, n. 2, June 2015, p. 5 2 2.2. The Syrian minorities under the Assad regime As we said, Hazif Al-Assad started the secularization of the country in the 70s, despite being a member in the Shi’i axis with Iran, signifying that it was only a strategic alliance, not dictated by religious beliefs. It must be underlined that the Bath party of Assad had also a strong socialist wing, whose natural outcome was a strong alliance with the USSR, of which Syria have been the most loyal ally in the Middle east in the Cold war and now with Bashar Al-Assad and Vladimir Putin’s Russia. The alliance with Khomeinist Iran was necessary for the political isolation faced by Syria in the late 70s and early 80s: Israel was the enemy number one, Jordan and Saudi Arabia were Sunni powers, after the war of the Yom Kippur the relations with Egypt were tense, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was the principal rival of Baathist Syria, Lebanon was shaken by the civil war, in which Assad intervened in 1976, and the bound was with Hezbollah. This relation with the “party of God” was interpreted by the western powers, especially by the USA of George Bush, as an alliance with radical terrorists in the scenario of the war of the Persian Gulf7. Iran was Assad’s only choice, from a certain point of view. In any case, the secularization promoted by Hazif Al-Assad benefited both the ethnic and the religious minorities, such as the Maronites Christian, and promoted a liberalization of the condition of the women8. With the Alawites in command through the Assad dynasty, the major risk for the country, especially after the 1979 Revolution in Iran, was the unrest of the Sunni majority. Just as Saddam Hussein, Hazif Al-Assad understood the political importance of Islam and always stated out the fact that Syrian was a Muslim nation9, in order to keep under control the general Sunni unrest under the new Shi’i government of the Assad dynasty, which became more authoritarian and focused on the personal charisma of the president at the end of the 70s, when the world economy crisis hit also the middle East10. In this Scenario the military and security agents of the regime repressed with efficiency and brutality any attempt of public revolt, causing indiscriminate massacres like the famous one of Hama, where 10-20.000 people linked to the Muslim brotherhood of Syria were killed in 1982 by the intervention of the Syrian army, putting an end to the Muslim Brotherhood’s opposition in Syria11. In this situation in Syria was the principle ally of Khomeini’s Iran, who did not condemn the attack, for the strategic alliance that occurred between the two countries12. The Hama massacre was also related to the Kurdish people of Syrian, who were hardly repressed by the Assad regime and made a tactical alliance with the Sunni radicals while now they are totally enemies. In that case it was sectarianism which played an important role in the forge of the tactical alliance, despite the fact that the Kurds are a nationalist force, not a Muslim one, also because not all Kurds are Muslims and not all Muslim Kurds are Sunni. The Kurds of Syria are the smallest part of the Kurdish ethnic and linguistic group, whose main settlements are in south eastern Turkey and northern Iraq, plus an enclave in the Zagros mountains in Iran. In Syria, the Kurds were put in danger especially after 2011, while before they had gained some 7 Campanini M., Storia del Medio Oriente contemporaneo, pp. 198-201 Ibidem, p. 201 9 Atwa, A. B., Islamic State. The Digital Caliphate, p. 71 10 Campanini, Storia del Medio Oriente contemporaneo., pp. 199-200 11 Ibidem, p. 199 12 Campanini M. e Torelli S. M., Lo scisma della mezzaluna. Sunniti e sciiti, la lotta per il potere, Il Mulino, Bologna, 2017, p. 72 8 power in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein in the Second Gulf war. Iraq is where the Kurdish group has reached more power in the Middle East and an eventual autonomy or independence reached in this country could lead towards a similar situation in north eastern Syria. In any case, in Syria the Kurds have never been a threat to the national unity of the country like, instead, they have in Turkey, where they have been suppressed in their social costumes since the stipulation of the Lausanne treaty in 1923 and where the Kurdish Workers’ Party, named PKK, have been a terroristic threat to the governments of Ankara13. In the first months of the “Arab Spring” in Syria, the Assad government, which publicly downplayed the extent of the anti-government unrest, introduced some concessions to the Sunni majority and the Kurds14, whose Salafist ones would have eventually fought alongside the Islamic State15. The general condition of non-Alawites minorities in Syria was thus the same: they had religious freedom, yes, but they were heavily limited in the participation of the power, which was in the hand of the Alawites officers and the Bath party, whose principal instance was the pan-Arab trend. Also, they were not granted the autonomy of an ethnic or religious group, just like the non-Muslims. Neither the governorates od Latakia or as-Suwayda, the only two who have not a Sunni majority, have seen the birth of an autonomous form of self-government, even after Assad took the power. 3. The civil war 3.1. Background With the break out of the civil war in the late 2012 after the failure of international measures and the refuse of the government’s reforms, the rebels’ army organized in the Free Syrian army by deserters officers and mostly volunteers from the Sunni majority, started to organize itself in 2012 in its base in Turkey, receiving great support especially from Saudi Arabia and, in smaller measure, by the Western countries, led by USA, while the Assad regime was heavily supported by Russia, China, Iran and Hezbollah. The regional superpower of Iran has been, and is still now, the main ally of Assad in the area, funding and supplying weapons and men to the Syrian army against the rebels and the Jihadist of the Islamic State as well. The Syrian army proved itself mostly loyal to the regime, more than in other Arab countries whose regimes were betrayed by the army, like Libya and Egypt16. As the war raged on in 2013, the necessities of keeping the official army troops of the Syrian army in the battlefield brought to the organization of the National Defence Forces, a paramilitary group under the control of the Syrian army with functions of guarding and guaranteeing the security of villages, cities and areas reconquered by the Syrian forces against the Jihadist militias of Al-Nusra and Daesh. The NDF proved themselves helpful for the army with its tens of thousands of members, whose training was primary provided by the Iranian IRGC and Hezbollah agents. The origins of the alliance of Syria with Iran are set in the 70s, after the failure of Nasserism, to which followed the formation of Shi’i axis that included Damascus and Tehran and which looked to Lebanon’ 13 Belge C. e Karakoç E., Minorities in the Middle East: Ethnicity, Religion, and Support for Authoritarianism, p. 5 https://www.britannica.com/place/Syria 15 Atwa, A. B., Islamic State. The Digital Caliphate, p. 93 16 M. Campanini, Storia del Medio Oriente contemporaneo, pp. 205-207 14 Hezbollah and southern Iraq after 200317. Even if the most important ally of Syria in those years was the USSR and Hazif Al-Assad had installed basically a secular government, the Islamic republic of Khomeini continued being an important geopolitical ally in the area and has kept these boundaries also with Bashar Al-Assad until these very days. The coalition led by the USA has treated Assad’s regime as a “protector of international terrorism” since the time of the alliance with Iran in the early 80s, and has provided help and support to the Kurds and the rebels as well, but not as happened for example in Libya against Mu’ammar Gheddafi’s regime. The main reason is that Syria represented a point of balance in Middle East and that was not politically isolated as Libya, since Bashar Al-Assad could count on the support of Russia, Iran and China18. 3.2. The consequences of emigration: rebalancing the ethnic and religious composition of Syria It must be taken in account the important factor of the emigration of Syrian people during the last 9 years of war. It is reported that more than 5.000.000 of Syrian emigrated from their country at war and we must consider the demographic effect on the variations of the percentage of the population. On an estimated population of 21.000.000 units in 2011 there were almost 1.500.000 Kurds and Bedouins Arab, almost 800.000 Palestinian, emigrated in the country for the major part in the 70s and 80s. and 450.000 Armenians while the other were Syrian Arabs. Religiously talking the 75% of the population was composed by Sunni Muslims, alongside whom we could find almost 2.600.000 Shi’i Alawites, 1.000.000 of Orthodox Christians, 600.000 Druzes and the rest divided in Catholic, atheist or nonreligious people and others19. If with the war we must count that 5.000.000 Syrians escaped to Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and in part in north African and western countries, we must consider the possible outcome of this emigration. But what is the ethnic and religious composition of the Syrian refugees? Which is the one of the casualties tough? A major problem for this kind of records is the fact that 3.500.000 refugees are hosted now in Turkey, which has stopped registering citizens ethnic origins since 1960 and has not registered the ethnic or religious groups of the Syrian refugees either. Despite this we have some data on the Arab people of some southern Turkish provinces in which, thanks to the Syrian immigration, the Arab speaking part of the population grew up significantly, affecting the demographic composition of southern Turkish provinces. Today, Arabic-speaking refugees and citizens constitute 56% of Hatay’s population, making it the first Arab-majority province of Turkey. And while Alawites outnumbered Hatay’s Arab community before the war, the refugee influx has made the Sunni Arab and Alawite communities nearly equal in size. Similarly, Kilis once had an Arab community of less than 1% but is now poised to become Turkey’s second Arab-majority province. Arabs have also reportedly made big population leaps in Mardin (21% to 31.2%) and Sanliurfa (13% to 32.3%)20. On these statistics yet it is hard to understand how many Alawites, Sunni Arabs or Kurds have left the country. It seems that the areas less hit by the war, like the 17 M. Campanini, Storia del Medio Oriente contemporaneo, p. 201 Ibidem, pp. 202-203 19 https://www.britannica.com/place/Syria 20 https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/syrian-refugees-in-turkey 18 province of Latakia, while the major part of the refugees seems to belong to the territory with Sunni majority, around Raqqa, Aleppo, Damascus and all the zones where the civil war and the war with ISIS raged and rage on still now. Some minor data about the refugees are available in any case: the 100ArmenPress reports that 22.000 Syrian-Armenians have been hosted in Armenia since 201121, a part too small to be considered influent on the data we are searching. In 2015 the Zaman al Wasi newspaper reported that among 125.000 and 150.000 Syrian Turkmen refugees arrived in Lebanon in 201522. The site Rudaw in 2014 reported that almost 200.000 Kurds fled to Iraq23 but we can suppose that now most of them have returned in Rojava. Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Ümit Yalçın stated in 2016 that almost 500.000 of Syrian Turkmens have took refuge in Turkey24, a significant number of the over 3.5 million refugees of the whole country. The Saudi Arab embassy of Washington said in 2015 that 2.5 million of Syrian have been hosted in the country25, maybe we can suppose that the major part of them are Sunni Arabs. Another question of the refugees is the one about the Palestinian refugees. At the beginning of the conflict there were estimated to be 581.000, for the major part situated in the zone of Damascus and tens of thousands already had to move to Jordan and Lebanon since the first years of war26. There is them the big question of what will be of the refugees, if it will be possible for them to return home, in which way, when, and all these questions will be answered only by time. If the return of, we can estimate, almost 4.000.000 Sunni Arabs will take place in the two or three years after the end of the conflict, Assad regime will be able to collect an amount of consent in the remaining population to contrast eventual unrest by the reintegrated refugees, of course in the case that Assad’s strategy will be successful in every field and in all the country. If the reintegration of the refugees will be controlled and organized by the government, it will be able to re-collocate them in a way to reduce the possibilities of new insurgences all along the country. In this case the local forces of the National Defence Forces could be useful to control the situation in the locations of the reintegration of the refugees, with local divisions used not only to secure the areas but also to help in the reintegration. If this will occur the possibilities of a new unrest and insurgence could decrease a lot. Beside the emigration effect of the refugees we must also take in account the internally displaced ones. We are talking about almost 6 more million people who have lost their homes and had to leave their areas to reach more peaceful regions of Syria. If these people’s return to their homes will be efficiently controlled and organized by the State, it will be possible to reduce once again the possibilities of insurgence and unrest in the population. If Assad will play well his cards, he will be able to rebuild his consent among the civil population after almost a decade of civil war. 21 https://armenpress.am/eng/news/938882.html interview to Hoa-Binh Adjemian, Head of the Cooperation Section at the EU Delegation to Armenia 22 https://en.zamanalwsl.net/news/article/11837 23 https://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/syria/070120141 24 https://www.dailysabah.com/politics/2016/12/15/turkey-stands-united-with-turkmens-says-foreignministry-undersecretary-yalcin 25 https://www.saudiembassy.net/press-release/saudi-arabia-received-25-million-syrians-beginning-conflict 26 https://www.zamanalwsl.net/news/article/56476 3.3. The Kurdish problem and the Kurdish solution: an ethnic minority in a sectarian and political conflict We have already delignated some aspect of the Kurds and now we will analyse the possibilities deriving from their role in the conflict. The major part of the Kurds of northern Iraq had to fight against the jihadist of the Islamic State and Al-Nusra in the area of Mosul and then also those of northern Syria fought in Raqqa and the Rojava region. Now that the caliphate has been defeated these Syrian Kurds re at risk for the recent Turkish intervention in northern Syria to create a soft zone in order to prevent disorder near the border. Currently the Kurdish forces, organized for the major part in the YPG, the People’s Protection Units, armed force of the Democratic Union Party, are controlling the north east of Syria, in the de facto autonomous region of Rojava27. We are talking about a mostly plane region, limited in the west by the Tigri river and in the north by Turkey. Despite being Sunni Muslims for the major part, the Kurds of Syria, and Iraq too, are not involved in the conflict from a sectarian point of view and neither have been attacked for their religious beliefs. The Kurds are to be considered only as a specific ethnic group in the conflict, who have fought for his own territory. It is still hard to analyse and understand any knot of the story of the civil war in Syria, the interference of Turkey and Saudi Arabia, the western and Russian interest, but it is possible now to understand better the situation of the Kurds in the conflict. First, we must highline that the war is not only a conflict between Sunni and Shia, there are more and more causes that must be taken in consideration. The reasons of the fight against the Islamist militias of ISIS, Al-Qāʿida and Al-Nusra must not be confused with the ones of the “democratic rebels”, who are in any case composed for the major part by Sunni Arabs. The support of the American aviation has been relevant under any point of view for the success of the Kurdish defence force, known as YPG, in the fight but since when the American troops retired from northern Syria in the October 2019, the destiny of the Kurds have been tied to the one of Bashar Al-Assad against Erdogan interference. Turkey’s interest in northern Syria is dictated by the necessity of limiting the agitation due to the possible links that the Syrian Kurds could have with the Turkish one of the PKK, a designated terrorist group that has waged a low-grade insurgency against the state for decades28. My opinion is that the Syrian Kurds, just like the Iraqi ones in 2003, will push their new acquired role for the formal institution of an autonomous region in the de facto autonomous region of Rojava, where they mostly fought the ISIS’ forces with their Peshmerga military forces of norther Kurdish Iraq. The question is: will President Bashar Al-Assad give them the so long desired autonomy that they deserve? Considering the Syrian-Kurdish alliance not only against the Jihadist but also against the Turkish intervention in January 2019 the answer seems to be yes. In order to contain an eventual unrest of the Kurds in the aftermath of the civil war it will be necessary to recognize at least an autonomous self-government in the Rojava region, alongside the Iraqi one in the region of Mosul. Yet, it is important, since October 2019, the tactical alliance of the Assad regime and the northern Kurds against the military invasion of Erdogan’s Turkey to secure the Turkish border. The evolution of this tactical alliance in a strategic one of common interests for the fight against Turkey and an eventual ISIS resurgence 27 https://thekurdishproject.org/history-and-culture/kurdish-nationalism/peoples-protection-units-ypg/ Dobbins J. and Martini J., Indecision in Washington Compounded the Kurds' Dilemma, in https://www.rand.org/, October 28 2019 28 could lead towards a radical change in the regime’s policies. In the best of the hypothesis it would be the first step to political pluralism and the end of authoritarianism in Syria, maybe with Assad still as head of the state, but it would be a long process which could take years and years. This scenario would also mean probably the loss of Assad’s major ally in the region, Iran, and with it the end of the Shi’i axis of power in middle East, and maybe also the Russian support, which has been fundamental for the life of the regime since the beginning of the civil war and probably will be also in the next years after conclusion of the conflict. What could be the effects of Kurdish autonomy in Rojava granted by the Assad regime? First, if the alliance goes on, a strong military ally in the Kurdish forces of the Peshmerga, also those of Iraq, which would mean a closer bond of Syria and Iraq thanks to the Kurds minority the two countries share. Second, at least, a relief of the international popular opinion about the regime, which could lose its authoritarian and terroristic aspects for the not so clear conduct in the civil war, for the gas poison attack on the civil population were often affecting negatively the western opinion of the regime and maybe also the Arab League’s one. The Arab League is divided in the relations of its members with the regime of Bashar Al-Assad, some country, like Lebanon, Mauretania, Oman and Algeria, have never stopped their diplomatic relation with Damascus, and some other are thawing their relations too since 2018, like Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Sudan and Bahrain, while the most adverse to the regime are Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and Egypt. Only if the Syrian conflict will end with no more bloodshed and with a peaceful resolution towards both the Kurds and the rebels maybe it will be able to join again the Arab League, strengthening its position in the international scenario: a victory that will be claimed by Russia, which has been leading the diplomatic efforts to normalize the relations of Syria with the members of the Arab League29. Also, the return of Syria into the Arab League could low the general tension towards Iran. Third, the resolution of the internal conflict. A new general policy towards the Kurdish minority could be the first step to a more vast and general policy of tolerance and openness for the minorities of all Syria, involving the Druzes, the Christians, Alawites, Assyrians, Armenians, building a large consent around the regime of Assad which could limit the unrest of the Sunni Arab majority, already decimated in the conflict and in the emigrations. Some political pluralism for some parts of the population can be the answer for the resolution of the internal conflict in Syria for an outcome where Bashar al-Assad is still the leader of the country, but the conditions under which this scenario would be possible are strict and hard to realize all together. Turkey must remain a threat to the Kurds, Russia must support Assad, Assad’s own reputation in the international scenario must be recovered, the foreign policy of the USA must go in the direction of international balance and pacifism in the Middle East, which could be very hard to realize, either that president Donald Trump remains in power or not after 2020 elections. 29 A. H. Bakeer e G. Cafiero, Bashar al-Assad and the Greater Arab World, in https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/syriasource/bashar-al-assad-and-the-greater-arab-world 4. The National Defence Forces: a strategic and place for Iran, Hezbollah and the Syrian minorities 4.1. The foreign influence of Iran and Hezbollah As we said, the National Defence Forces are a paramilitary body formed in 2012 as a division under the control of the Syrian army with the main function of control and defence of the villages and minor settlements freed by the principal body of the army. The principal factor is that the members of the NDF are for the major part coming from those same villages and areas and are linked directly to the local civil population. This role permits the army to maintain all of its troops on the battlefield against both ISIS and the rebels of the Free Syrian Army, which is now relegated to some little zones in the north-west of the country and in the southeast, as today the governmental forces have regained the control on the majority of Syria. As we also have mentioned before, the NDF members have been trained by the special Iranian forces of the IRGC, the famous Pasdaran, under the supervision of the passed general Qasem Soleimani since 2014 and some of them have formed special divisions such as the “Suqur al Sahraa”, the desert hawks, trained in the desert near Homs to fight the Islamic State. Important armament and training in guerrilla tactics have been provided by Hezbollah30, strongly connected with the Assad regime since the beginning of the Lebanese civil war in 1976, when Hazif Al-Assad announced Syrian intervention in the conflict31. 4.2. The role of the minorities in the National Defence Forces The organization of a loyalist militia is not unprecedented: during the internal conflict in Syria with the Muslim Brotherhood, the regime of Hazif Al-Assad raised a similar paramilitary force of members of the Bath party and other civilians to fight the insurrection since 1976 to 1982, when the massacre of Hama signed the end of the Muslim Brotherhood in the country. The main force of the National Defence Forces is now composed not by the loyalist of the Bath party, which has been lowered in his own influence by the military, but by the Alawites, loyal to Assad himself, and in second part by the other religious and ethnic minorities of Syria, especially the Christians, the Druzes, the Shi’i groups and also the Armenians, who play a role in the total estimated 100.000 troops of the NDF. This characteristic is opposed to the Syrian Arab Army, the regular army of the regime, which is composed for the major part by Sunni Arabs. This affiliation with the minorities, but which does not exclude Sunni Arab members, has the objective to strengthen the support around the regime of Assad in the local areas and settlements of the minorities32. The only minority which has not been enlisted in significant part in the NDF is the Kurdish one, about which we talked before. This point may suggest an ulterior proof of a different solution for the Kurds from the other minorities at the 30 https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/who-are-pro-assad-militias-syria M. Campanini, Storia del Medio Oriente contemporaneo, pp. 204-205 32 https://jamestown.org/program/institutionalized-warlordism-syrias-national-defense-force/ 31 end of the war, which could be the already told autonomy for the region of Rojava, while the others will form a hard core of loyalist of the regime. The NDF organization has provided a rhetoric in its language and usage of social media that refers to the its own members as martyrs and heroes of the country, promising and providing any kind of help to the relatives of the dead fighters. They use a symbolic language and repetitive expression which refer to the martyrdom and the sacrifice of the fighters in the war33. Going beyond the humanitarian and ideologic reasons behind the help provided, this sort of actions can be seen also as an attempt to maintain the loyalty of the families of the fighters. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reports that the casualties registered by the NDF amount to more than 52.000 in 9 years of war, only 10.000 fewer than the regular Syrian Arab army34 and these numbers will be important to clear the importance and the influence of the NDF for the military strategy of Assad and the whole conflict. An important question will be related to the local officers of the NDF, some of them are involved in criminal actions and business and some observers talk about “warlords” who could be a destabilizing factor after the end of the conflict35. If these officers will not be controlled and re-integrated in the normal civil population or stopped and substituted, they could become the cause of a popular resentment against come branches of the NDF, which could then escalate quickly to a new popular unrest, especially from those parts of the population that are not ethnically represented into the NDF, like the Sunni Arabs or the Turkmens. Last but not the least, an interesting thing to underline about the NDF is the presence of an all-female force, recruited since 2013 as it is reported by the Independent British newspaper. This brigade, known as the “Lioness for National Defence”, consists of 500 women trained with Kalashnikov rifles who have been spotted guarding the area of Homs, one of the most hit zones in the south-east of the country36. It is natural to link the belonging of these fighters to the secularization that has always been promoted by the Assad regime, since the time of Hazif, which has always been countered by the Islamist rebels. 33 https://www.facebook.com/National.Defence.Forces.NDF. The most recurring expression in the posts is: “‫”لواجبها المقدس بخدمة ذوي انبل بني البشي‬, “For the sacred duty to serve the people of the noblest of humans”. 34 https://www.syriahr.com/en/?p=157193 35 https://jamestown.org/program/institutionalized-warlordism-syrias-national-defense-force/ 36 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/assads-lionesses-the-female-last-line-in-thebattle-for-syria-8462221.html Conclusions In the end of our discussion we have analysed many factors that could affect or improve the social and political conditions of the Syrian minorities: emigration and displacement, the National Defence Forces, the IRGC of Iran, Hezbollah, Kurdistan, Turkey’s intervention in northern Syria, Vladimir Putin’s support to Assad. In an ideal prospection all these political actors and scenarios could lead towards a reconciliation of Syria where the main role is played, as we said by the Kurdish situation. The potential of this factor is yet to be expressed and the consequences could lead to a total rebalancing of the power in the Middle East, affecting especially the influence of Iran, already hit by the economic embargo of the US, and of Turkey. If Bashar Al-Assad will be able to deal with the Kurdish question reassessing his sovereignty and the one of Syria over Rojava region formalizing the de facto autonomy of Kurds, probably president Recep Tayyip Erdogan will have to do the same with the even stronger Kurdish minority of his country. The problem with Turkey is that now the major attention is paid to the situation in Libya, where Turkey and Russia are now playing the role of the most influent foreign powers in the conflict between general Haftar and President Fayez Serraj. The future of Syria is till on a difficult balance, full of question and doubts. 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