By Michael Young The Daily Star, Lebanon
It is unfortunate that among those most anxiously observing the uprising in Syria (and not only Syria) have been members of the Middle East’s religious and ethnic minorities. Indeed, Syria’s Alawite leadership is perpetrating a butchery partly because it expects its community to be marginalized if Bashar Assad falls.
Minority solidarity is a dangerous impulse. It has led many of Syria’s Kurds and Druze to watch from the sidelines as their countrymen have been slaughtered – when they have not actively participated in the repression. In Lebanon, it has pushed leading figures in the Christian community, among them Maronite Patriarch Beshara Rai, to defend the Assad regime. And the vile Sister Agnes Mariam of the Cross, of the Catholic Media Center, has been a useful idiot on behalf of Syria’s intelligence services, echoing regime propaganda.
The foolishness and inhumanity of these reactions does not mean minority questions will be any less important once the current consignment of autocrats disappears. Minorities will gain in significance, because in many countries the breakdown of authoritarian rule also represents a breakdown of the ideological and intimidatory underpinnings that once kept minorities in line.
The edifice began collapsing in 2003, when the United States invaded Iraq, removing the minority Sunni regime of Saddam Hussein. The Americans, for a moment, naively aspired to sponsor an equitable Iraqi social contract, with federalism at its core. In reality, they ushered in a Shiite-dominated regime, while federalism permitted the Kurds to consolidate their autonomy in the north. The Sunni Arabs, despite combating Al-Qaeda, have since then grown alienated from Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government, generating worries that Iraq’s centrifugal forces may become unmanageable.
Fear of what might happen in Syria if the majority Sunnis regain power has colored the behavior of the country’s minorities. Their fixation has been deformed by the expectation that if the Sunnis return, they will do so as resentful Islamists.
Read more: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Opinion/Columnist/2012/Mar-01/165090-for-minorities-now-is-the-time-to-report.ashx#ixzz1nzL76yDS
(The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb)