Fostering a Security Architecture for Minorities in the Levant: Failed Shots

Romy Haber

The Levant, a vast geographical region in the Eastern Mediterranean, is described by historian Philip Mansel as a “window to the world” and a place where “people switched identities as easily as they switched languages”. In his book Levant: Splendour and Catastrophe on the Mediterranean, Mansel gives a romanticized description of what he calls the golden days of the Levant, a period when different nationalities mingled in port cities, spoke different languages, celebrated each other’s holidays, and put “deals before ideals”.

However, the pluralism and mosaic of the region that were often praised, have frequently dissolved into violence and bloodshed. Minorities in the Levant have always faced discrimination and persecution. They have survived massacres, genocides and the erasure of their culture in the land to which they are indigenous. Minorities are often treated as second-class citizens not only by authoritarian governments but also by non-state actors and militia that play a dominant role in the region.

This post assesses seven different strategies and mechanisms which have been adopted at different times in the region, with the aim of protecting minorities from the multitude of threats that come from different sources and actors. It concludes that the constitutional solutions offered by decentralization and federalism might offer a more stable and protective security architecture for minorities in the region. The objective of this assessment is to learn from the failures of the past in order not to repeat them, and to find the necessary tools and components to build a security architecture that would keep minorities in the Levant safe. 

Taqiyya

An old strategy is the doctrine of prudential dissimulation known as Taqiyya. It is an Islamic juridical term. Shiite jurists and theologians extended the depth and importance of a pre-existing concept in Sunni law called Taqiyya during the beginning of the Shiite/Sunni conflict. Taqiyya is the notion that, under some circumstances, most notably the imminent threat of death or other types of significant, irreparable harm, lying is permitted and even desirable for the goal of protecting oneself. For example, some Shias pretended to have converted to Christianity or Sunni Islam, without really giving up on their real faith, to survive.

However, while this strategy provided temporary security, it could not meet the freedom of religion standards we have in the 21st century as set out under Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The Proxy Trap

Today, Shias in the Levant no longer adopt Taqiyya, but the community is now controlled by a foreign superpower: Iran. Minorities perceive the idea of being armed as the opportunity to provide their own security. Foreign superpowers exploit these ambitions to expand their power. For example, Iran has used the forgotten and downtrodden status of Shia in Lebanon to turn them into a proxy of the Islamic Republic of Iran. After the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (I.R.G.C.) traveled to Lebanon and assisted in developing Hezbollah, an anti-Israel militia. Iran provides Hezbollah with funding, weapons, and strategic advice. 

This gave Lebanese Shias an illusion of security and power. But in reality, Iran turned Shias into radicalized mercenaries that are now demonized by the other communities in Lebanon. In other words, while the idea of a minority group having its own security apparatus may sound appealing to them, there’s often a price to pay. 

The Responsibility to Protect

In 2004, after the US-led invasion of Iraq, the Kurdish military forces (Peshmerga) took control of the security of the Nineveh Plain. Between 2006 and 2008, the Kurdish regional government blocked US-backed efforts to form a legitimate Assyrian police force in the Nineveh Plain. And two weeks before the ISIS invasion in 2014, the Peshmerga disarmed Yazidis and Assyrians in the Nineveh Plains and Sinjar. They were responsible for their protection but when ISIS attacked, they were abandoned. There are debates on whether the Peshmerga should be held liable for it. In 2017, a Dutch court found that Dutch peacekeepers were co-responsible for the deaths during the siege of Srebrenica in 1995 because they failed to conduct their primary role. Similarly, the Peshmerga could be held accountable.

This incident reinforces the idea that minorities cannot depend on others to protect them. In an interview Athra Kado, a foreign affairs committee member of the Chaldo-Assyrian Student’s Union and a volunteer in the Nineveh Plain Protection Units (NPU), told me:

“From the security perspective we have a good experience in the city of Baghdeda (Qaraqosh) and the town of Karemlesh, where the security forces of our people (NPU) are holding the security profile in these areas, and because of these forces, which are recruited by the Assyrian Christians of Nineveh Plain, these areas recorded more numbers of returnees than other liberated areas from ISIS in Nineveh Plain…So, the main steps that should be done to provide stable life, good future, and bring hope for the Assyrian Christians in Iraq are to support NPU and increase its number, bringing back the areas controlled by Peshmerga under the control of the central government, and give the security in the hands of the locals, then establishing the new province. These are the main steps, and the rest will come on its own.”

Minority Rule

Sectarian minority rule has a long history in the Levant. While the idea can sound appealing to the minority in power, the consequences are not. For example, after decades of being outsiders and generally being politically marginalized, the Alawites, a sect regarded as heretical by Sunnis, have established their hegemony, which has had a profound psychological impact on that society. 

The Alawites had their own Alawite State during the French Mandate in what is now Syria but it did not last long. Later on, the Assad Dynasty came to power. It wasn’t easy for a Sunni majority to accept the Alawite rule. The Alawites were accused of being neither Arab nor Muslim by the Muslim Brotherhood, and Syria was pushed toward Civil War in the 1970s and 1980s.

Hafez Al Assad abandoned the radical socialism and secularism of the Jadid dictatorship that came before him. He urged Alawites to convert to mainstream Islam and prevented Alawite Sheikhs from worshiping Ali excessively, and served as an example for his people by upholding Sunni customs. He erected mosques in Alawite communities, engaged in public prayer, fasted, and inspired his followers to follow suit.

Nonetheless, this didn’t stop the situation from exploding. In 2011, Syrians protested against the Assad dictatorship. Assad is still in power but the country is isolated by the international community, devastated by war, and Alawites are not much safer than they were before Assad came to power. According to an interview by Reuters, a third of Alawites from Homs had fled to Tartous amid fears of ethnic cleansing. Even the Alawites who opposed the regime weren’t safe. There are sectarian dynamics behind the conflict they cannot escape; other opposition members did not trust them and accused them of being spies, and they were also often considered by other Alawites as traitors who sided with Islamists.

Secularism and Nationalism

With the rise of Pan-Arabism, there also rose a misconception that secularism and nationalism could solve the Islamist problem, by putting the whole Middle East region under one Arab umbrella, and uniting all the peoples. Many philosophers who supported this ideology were from minority groups like the Arab nationalist Michel Aflaq, a Syrian Greek orthodox man. He co-founded the Syrian Ba’ath Party. He wrote:

“The Arab Christians, when their nationalism is fully awakened and when they restore their genuine character, will recognize that Islam for them is nationalist education in which they have to be absorbed in order to understand and love it to the extent that they become concerned about Islam as about the most precious thing in their Arabism. If the actual reality is still far from this wish, the new generation of Arab Christians has a task that it should perform with daring and detachment, sacrificing for it their pride and benefits, for there is nothing that equals Arabism and the honor of belonging to it.”

But what some elite academics were parroting and promoting didn’t reflect the aspirations of the local minorities. Each community has its own traditions and culture. In the words of Nadim Shehadi: “intellectuals in cosmopolitan cities tended to favor the secular nationalists”.

Pan-Arabism is more of a totalitarian movement skilled in cultural suppression. By imposing an identity on all the different groups, it erased the ethnoreligious, linguistic, and cultural diversity of the region. And it also failed to end Islamism. The ideology which posed as “anti-imperialist” was itself imperialist when it imposed itself on other communities that do not have an Arab Identity such as Assyrians, Yazidis, Kurds and Maronites.

The goal shouldn’t be erasing “sectarianism” but rather “re-organizing sectarian coexistence”. 

Power-Sharing

Power-sharing is often resorted to for conflict management and resolution. A common example is the Lebanese power-sharing system.

Michel Chiha, one of the fathers of the Lebanese Constitution wrote:

“There are minorities here, denominations there, and different cultures co-existing together everywhere. We should not argue for or against the particular rights of one or the other but rather simply recognize the rights of all… Amicable coexistence between the two would only be achieved through a political framework based on equal respect for the other’s belief system and that this would only be accomplished in an open assembly where each religious grouping and every region was represented as fully and as practically as possible.”

The confessional system in Lebanon divided power between Christian and Muslim communities but it did not guarantee prosperity. Its flaw is not in its sectarian nature but rather in the highly centralized power.

Lebanon is a hostage of corrupt feudal warlords who have brought misery and poverty to the population. Elections keep on failing to replace them because the system allows for impunity. Politicians are not held accountable because they shift the blame to another politician of another sect. The only way to break this loop is to decentralize. The loosening of intrusive central control threatens the survival of the sectarian corrupt political elite.

Decentralization

The principle of subsidiarity holds that tasks that can be performed at a lower organizational level should be done so rather than being taken on by a higher-level organization. The Roman Catholic Church's encyclicals Rerum Novarum (1891) and Quadragesimo Anno embraced the concept (1931). It is also in the European Union's legal code.

When social and political issues are dealt with at the local level, minorities are empowered because they are in control of their fate. In other words, decentralization is an optimal tool for diversity and pluralism accommodation. It can accommodate the rights, interests, needs, and claims of competing groups.

Federalism is a constitutional “dissolution of power” and decentralization. Self-determination is an important part of it. It guarantees representation of the different groups and allows them to improve their development and security. 

Any attempt to build a security architecture for minorities should be based on this principle.

Romy Haber is a freelance journalist and researcher finishing her masters in International Security. You can follow her on Twitter @Romytweeting. 

Suggested Citation: Romy Haber, ‘Fostering a Security Architecture for Minorities in the Levant: Failed Shots’ IACL-AIDC Blog (20 October 2022) https://blog-iacl-aidc.org/lebanon/2022/10/20/fostering-a-security-architecture-for-minorities-in-the-levant-failed-shots.