STORY SUMMARY

Rumors have circulated recently that Iran is sponsoring a plan to redraw Syria’s demographic map, including the granting of Syrian nationality to 750,000 Shiites from throughout the Middle East.

The Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt has declared that the land registry office in Homs has been burned down to remove evidence of property ownership and facilitate the dispossession of Sunnis in the province, in that way changing its sectarian makeup.

This included settling Lebanese Shiites and Syrian Shiites displaced by the fighting in the area of Swaida.

That said, Jumblatt does not make such claims lightly, and has long believed that Homs province is the key to the battle in Syria, as it provides geographical continuity between predominantly Alawite areas along the Syrian coast and Shiite-controlled areas in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley.

Even if the reports from Syria cannot be confirmed, it would be common sense for the regime and Iran to prepare for Syria’s likely future if President Bashar Assad’s forces prevail.

That does not necessarily mean that Iran seeks to create Shiite enclaves, although that would not be so difficult to imagine after Hezbollah used the defense of Shiites in Syria as its initial justification to deploy combatants in Qusair.

Read more: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Opinion/Columnist/2013/Jul-18/224071-is-iran-altering-syrias-sectarian-map.ashx#ixzz2ZZxQ6KsP
(The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb)