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

Kaufmann, Eric

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10/1/2015Partition: It’s time to recognise reality in Syriablogs.lse.ac.uk /politicsandpolicy/partition-its-time-to-recognise-reality-in-syria/The creation of an Alawi-minority coastal canton is a sine qua non for cutting the Gordian knot that is theSyrian conflict, argues Eric Kaufmann.Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama emerged from talks this week predictably far apart on thequestion of Bashar Al-Assad’s future. Russia wants him to remain as their client, recognising himas 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 thecountry 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 asSunni versus Alawi – and other minorities – will only feed Sunni resentment and bolster the popularity of ISIL. A keyfirst step is to create two arenas: one a coastal strip dominated by Alawis, Christians and sections of the urbanmiddle classes; the other a Sunni zone, much of which is already controlled by opposition groups. Only with a safeand defensible canton will Alawis be willing to see Assad fall. Once the Sunni zone has been established, the Westcan 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 theidea 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 factoethnic 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 isthe Syrian conflict. Kurdish, Alawi and Sunni federal units should maintain their defensive capabilities as long asmutual distrust remains high. No one pretends that power-sharing societies like Lebanon, Bosnia, Northern Irelandor Iraq are bastions of inter-ethnic comity. However, those that criticise its shortcomings should compare currentarrangements against likely alternatives, not sunlit utopian uplands or a prelapsarian innocence. We mustremember that, like democracy itself, ethnic power-sharing is the least worst option when a deeply-divided countryhas 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 basedfade, a more ecumenical and civic understanding of nationhood can emerge, with unitary institutions replacingconsociational ones.Some aver that power-sharing entrenches ethnic division, but this puts the cart of politics before the horse of socialchange. In the Netherlands, power-sharing arrangements between Catholic, Protestant, socialist and liberalsegments decayed in the 1960s when these identities lost their relevance. In the Canadian province ofNewfoundland, the denomination-based system for allocating government posts also disappeared in the 60s, andthe 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 thecombatants into safe and defensible political units under their own democratic governance. Inter-ethnic mixing andliberal nationhood is a nice-to-have, and should only arrive when populations are secure and ready to yield power tothe centre.1/2The migrant crisis in Europe has led to frantic calls for some kind of ‘action’ against ISIL. Obama and Putin agree onlittle, 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’scontrol is a recipe for disaster which can only prolong the tragedy that is today’s Syria.About the AuthorEric Kaufmann is Professor of Politics at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is an editorof Political Demography (Oxford, 2012) and author of a Demos report, freely available, entitledChanging Places: the White British response to ethnic change .  2/2

Partition: It’s time to recognise reality in Syria

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