The War Nerd: Little Kerry and the Three Bad Options

"The post-war years were full of wild experiments in the Arab world. The only constant was that military coups were the rule. Leaders came from the army—Nasser, Ghadafi, Saddam. So when an officer with coup-making skills happened to come from a tightly-knit community, he was almost sure to end up in charge. Saddam had his Tikrit clan in Iraq; Ghadafi had his academy buddies in Libya; Hafez Assad had his Alawite kin in Syria. The Alawites were perfectly placed to take advantage of this coup-centered polity. T. E. Lawrence said about them, “One Nusairi [Alawite] would not betray another, and would hardly not betray an unbeliever.” With Alawite officers filling the armed services in Syria, it was inevitable that an Alawite would come to power, as Hafez Assad did in 1970. From that point, they did what they had to do to remain in power. When killing was necessary, they killed. And in Syria, it was necessary fairly often. But I don’t know of any records showing that the Alawites were particularly cruel by the standards of the time and place. In fact, from the start of their rule in Syria, the Alawites have tried, via Ba’ath Party secularism and a long-term attempt to make Alawite ritual and doctrine closer to Sunni norms, to integrate with their neighbors."

~Gary Brecher, The War Nerd: Little Kerry and the Three Bad Options
https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/little-kerry/