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‘Second-Class’: The Grievances

of Sunni Officers in the Syrian
Armed Forces
a
Hicham Bou Nassif
a
Carleton College, Minnesota, USA
Published online: 04 Aug 2015.

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of Sunni Officers in the Syrian Armed Forces, Journal of Strategic Studies, DOI:
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 The Journal of Strategic Studies, 2015
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2015.1053604

‘Second-Class’: The Grievances of

Sunni Officers in the Syrian
Armed Forces

HICHAM BOU NASSIF

Downloaded by [Hicham Bou Nassif] at 23:26 05 August 2015

Carleton College, Minnesota, USA

ABSTRACT The defection of a significant number of Sunni officers amidst the

ongoing turmoil in Syria created a unique opportunity to get access to original
data on the Syrian armed forces. This study draws on extensive fieldwork to
probe the sectarian question in the Syrian officer corps. On the basis of a series of
interviews conducted throughout the summer of 2014, I investigate the politics
and consequences of sectarian stacking in the Syrian military as well as the root
causes of Sunni officers’ grievances and alienation. My conclusions draw on an
original database that compiles the sectarian affiliations of 81 prominent officers
who occupied the most senior military positions under Bashar al-Asad.

KEY WORDS: Arab Spring, Syrian Military, Sunni Officers, Grievances, Sectarian
Stacking, Defection

The Arab Spring rekindled scholarly interest in Arab militaries.1

Studies published in recent years have shed new light on Arab
1
See Risa Brooks, “Abandoned at the Palace: Why the Tunisian Military Defected
from the Ben ʿAli Regime in January 2011”, Journal of Strategic Studies 36 (April
2013), 205–20; Hillel Frisch, ‘The Egyptian Army and Egypt’s ‘‘Spring’”, Journal
of Strategic Studies 36/2 (April 2013), 180–204”; Florence Gaub ‘The Libyan
Armed Forces between Coup-Proofing and Repression’, Journal of Strategic Studies
36/2 (2013), 221–44; Hicham Bou Nassif, ‘Generals and Autocrats: How Coup-
Proofing Pre-determined the Military Elite’s Behavior in the Arab Spring’, Political
Science Quarterly 130/2 (2015), 245–75; Joshua Stacher, Adaptable Autocrats:
Regime Power in Egypt and Syria (Redwood City, CA: Stanford UP 2012); Hazem
Kandil, Soldiers, Spies and Statesmen: Egypt’s Road to Revolt (London: Verso,
2012); Yezid Sayigh, ‘Agencies of Coercion: Armies and Internal Security Forces’,
International Journal of Middle East Studies 43 (2011), 403–5; Zoltan Barany,
‘Comparing Arab Revolts: The Role of the Military”, Journal of Democracy 22
(2011), 28–39; Holger Albrecht, and Dina Bishara, ‘Back on Horseback: The
Military and Political Transformation in Egypt’, Middle East Law and Governance,
3 (2011), 13–23.

© 2015 Taylor & Francis

 2 Hicham Bou Nassif

armed forces, and fleshed out important dynamics pertaining to

military politics in the Arab world. The new scholarship, however,
suffers from a double limitation: First, so far, it is Egypt-centric.
At least half of the recent studies on Arab armies pertain to the
Egyptian armed forces, while most other militaries remain severely
understudied – the Syrian armed forces being a case in point. Second,
field-based research on Arab militaries continues to be scarce.2 This
lacuna is understandable in light of the difficulties scholars face when
they seek to get access to sources within military institutions. Yet it
remains true that much of the data that is most instructive is
fieldwork-dependent. This article seeks to contribute to filling the
informational gap with regard to the Syrian military which I study
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from the vantage point of Sunni officers’ grievances.

That Alawi officers enjoy special treatment in the military is a
time-honored orthodoxy in the literature on Syria. The work of
Nicholas Van Dam provides a detailed account on the manipulation
of sectarian loyalties in the Syrian armed forces. Polarization first
pitted Sunni against non-Sunni officers immediately after the 1963
Baathi-dominated coup. Following the destruction of Sunni power
base in the military, Alawi and Druze officers contended for
supremacy. The purge of Druze officers in 1966 opened the door
to Alawi domination despite the intra-Alawi struggle for power
between the supporters of generals Hafez al-Asad and Salah Jadid.
Van Dam’s analysis probes how overlapping sectarian, regional and
tribal loyalties reinforced one another and thus structured the
political loyalties of officers hailing from Syria’s compact minorities
(i.e. the Alawis and the Druze).3 Along similar lines, Hana Batatu’s
work on Syria shows that out of 31 officers appointed by Hafez al-
Asad to lead the Syrian armed forces between 1970 and 1997 no less
than 61.3 per cent were Alawi. Batatu argues that the heightening of
sectarian friction in Syria in the 1970s, on the backdrop of the
escalation of the conflict between the Muslim Brothers and the Asad
regime, as well as the latter’s unpopular intervention in Lebanon,
increased Asad’s dependency on his kinsmen for political survival,
and thus heightened the Alawi nature of his regime.4 Eyal Zisser,
Michael Eisenstaedt and James T. Quinlivan have also published

2
An exception is Yezid Sayigh, Above the State: The Officers’ Republic in
Egypt (Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Aug.
2012), 1–38.
3
Nikolaos Van Dam, The Struggle for Power in Syria. Politics and Society Under Asad
and The Ba’th Party (New York: I.B.Tauris 1996).
4
Hanna Batatu, Syria’s Peasantry, the Descendants of its Lesser Rural Notables and
Their Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP 1999), 215–26.
 The Grievances of Sunni Officers in the Syrian Armed Forces 3

informative studies shedding additional light on the politics of

sectarian stacking in the Syrian military.5
This literature forms the backdrop of my own research on the Syrian
officer corps. My fundamental thesis on the politics of sectarian bias in
the military does not diverge from the aforementioned studies. The level
of analysis is different, however. While the literature probes the macro-
dynamics of Syrian politics – namely, coups, and the role of the military
elite in the struggle for power in Syria – I focus on micro-dynamics
within the officer corps. That sectarian stacking has long been central to
the Asad regime coup-proofing strategies is by now firmly established.
But how did five decades of instrumentalization of sectarian identities
structure grievances and cross-sectarian relations within the Syrian
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officer corps? To the best of my knowledge, little empirical work has

been done to probe this question.
I proceed as follows. First, I specify the study’s goal and its contribution
to the literature on officers’ grievances. Second, I discuss my research
design and methods. Third, I probe the root causes of Sunni officers’
grievances in the military. I discuss my findings in the conclusion and
reflect upon future venues for research on the Syrian military.

Literature Review and Theoretical Contribution

Students of identity politics have long observed that autocrats in hetero-
geneous societies tend to favor their own ethnic, sectarian or racial group
in terms of military recruitment in order to enhance regime security – a
practice which the literature refers to as ethnic or sectarian ‘stacking’.6
5
Eyal Zisser, ‘The Syrian Army Between the Domestic and External Fronts’, The Middle
East Review for International Affairs 5/1 (March 2001), accessed on 7 June 2014 at:
<www.gloria-center.org/2001/03/zisser-2001-03-01>; James T. Quinlivan, ‘Coup
Proofing: Its Practice and Consequences in the Middle East’, International Security 24/2
(Autumn 1999), 131–65; Michael Eisenstaedt, ‘Syria’s defense companies: Profile of a
Praetorian Unit’, unpublished paper, 1989. See also N.E.Bou-Nacklie, “Les Troupes
Speciales: Religious and Ethnic Recruitment, 1916–46”, International Journal of Middle
East Studies 25/4 (Nov. 1993), 645–60; Patrick Seale, Asad. The Struggle for the Middle
East (Berkley: Univ.of California Press, 1988); Alasdair Drysdale, ‘Ethnicity in the Syrian
Officer Corps’, Civilizations 29/. 3/4 (1979), 359–74; Itamar Rabinovitch, Syria Under the
Baʿath 1963–1966. The Army-Party Symbiosis (Jerusalem: Israel UP. 1972); and Gordon
Torrey, Syrian Politics and the Military. 1945–1958 (Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1964).
6
See Philip Roessler, ‘The Enemy Within. Personal Rule, Coups and Civil War in Africa’”,
World Politics 63/2 (April 2011), 300– 46; Theodore McLauchlin, “Loyalty Strategy and
Military Defection in Rebellion”, Comparative Politics 42/3 (April 2010),333–50);
Quinlivan, Ibid; Donald Horowitz. Ethnic Groups in Conflict. (Berkeley: Univ. of
California Press1985); Cynthia H Enloe, Ethnic Soldiers, State Security in Divided Societies
(Athens: the Univ. of Georgia Press. 1980).
 4 Hicham Bou Nassif

When an autocrat in power becomes the symbol of a communal identity or

a value system held dear by officers serving under him, they are less likely
to threaten his rule, especially if the vacuum created by his downfall could
potentially be filled by a loathed ‘other’. Theodore McLauchlin notices
correctly in that regard that autocrats’ co-ethnics in the officer corps know
that should the out-group come to power they are likely to be purged from
the military; upholding the status-quo becomes a matter of self-interest.7
That said, beyond egoistic and professional considerations, loyalist officers
may well be convinced that their group’s physical survival, or political role,
could be at stake, should the regime crumble. Thus, if anti-regime
demonstrators take to the streets, communal fears and shared aversions
facilitate autocrats’ efforts to frame protesters as the ‘others’, agents of
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foreign powers and enemies of the ruling elite’s religious, ethnic or

sectarian group per se. This accounts for the fact that ethnic or sectarian
stacking has repeatedly proven particularly effective at wedding militaries
to nondemocratic regimes.
The aim of this study is to investigate how sectarian stacking shapes
officers’ grievances in the military. The literature on grievances in the
armed forces has traditionally been intertwined with the scholarship on
coups. Officers’ grievances pertaining to corporate and bureaucratic
motives have been central in the work of several influential scholars
including Eric Nordlinger, Roman Kolkowitz and Timothy Colton.8 By
contrast, grievances pertaining to officers’ professional ambitions have
figured less prominently in coup studies, possibly because they are less
easily testable – Samuel Decalo’s work on African coups is a notable
exception in that regard.9 Thompson’s classic study on the grievances of
coup-makers has shown that most putsches are triggered by a mixture
of corporate complaints pertaining to militaries’ organizational needs –
e.g. budget, autonomy, cohesion – and professional grievances centered
on personal ambitions of putschist officers.10 The two approaches differ
in their levels of analysis: corporate grievance theory studies coups from
the vantage point of the military as an organization whereas the work
on professional grievances pinpoints the egoistic motivations of coup-

7
McLauchlin, Ibid., 339.
8
Timothy Colton, Commissars, Commanders, and Civilian Authority: The Structure of
Soviet Military Politics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP 1979); Eric A. Nordlinger,
Soldiers In Politics. Military Coups And Governments (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice
Hall 1977); Roman Kolkowitz, The Soviet Military and the Communist Party
(Princeton UP 1967).
9
Samuel Decalo, Coups and Army Rule in Africa: Studies in Military Style (New Haven,
CT: Yale UP1976).
10
William Thompson, The Grievances of Military Coup-Makers (Beverly Hills, CA:
Sage Publications 1973).
 The Grievances of Sunni Officers in the Syrian Armed Forces 5

makers. Yet, despite this divergence, both approaches belong to the

rationalist-materialist school of civil-military relations studies and
contribute to its persistent hegemony. Put differently, both corporatist
and professional approach to putsches downplay the importance of
factors such as ideology or culture and stress interest-centered rational
behavior as the main source behind officers’ grievances. I show in this
study that while sectarian stacking does generate tension pertaining to
corporatist and professional motivations, it also heightens ideational
friction within the officer corps; consequently, non-material considera-
tions also need to be probed for the picture on officers’ grievances to be
full.
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Research Design
This study builds on a series of in-depth interviews conducted in May,
June, and July 2014, with Syrian Sunni officers who had defected from
the military in 2012 and 2013. Except for one retired brigadier-general,
all my interviewees had been active-duty officers until they decided to
break with the Syrian regime. I conducted my interviews in two Turkish
towns situated on the borders with Syria, Antakya and Al Rihanle, both
of which have become major asylum centers for Syrian refugees since
the beginning of the uprising in 2011. Of the 24 officers I interviewed,
three were Brigadiers, five Colonels, four Lieutenant-Colonels, four
Majors, five Captains and three Second-Lieutenants. The preponder-
ance of officers serving in the teaching staff of Syria’s military
academies, the Signal Corps, and Air Defense, reflects the fact that
few Sunni officers are assigned to army positions within the military,
and even less are allowed to join the military’s elite troops such as the
4th Armored Division or the Special Forces Division.
The interviews I conducted in Turkey all followed a semi-structured,
open-ended format and lasted between two to five hours each. There
was little variation among my interviewees in terms of age and rank as
most were middle and junior officers. The uniformity of my sample in
that regard reflects the fact that few Sunni officers are promoted to the
higher ranks in the Syrian armed forces; most retire prior to becoming
brigadier (Aamid), and only a handful reaches the coveted rank of
major-general (Liwa). In addition, of those Sunni officers who did reach
the upper echelons in the armed forces few defected. Consequently, the
sample of Sunni officers available to be interviewed was relatively
homogenous in terms of age (late 20s; till late 30s/mid-40s) and position
in the military hierarchy. The rural background, common among the
overwhelming majority of my interviewees, added to the homogeneity
of the sample. The urban/rural divide line, central to Syrian politics, is
inconsequential within the officer corps, whose members hail
 6 Hicham Bou Nassif

overwhelmingly from the countryside irrespective of sectarian affilia-

tion. My interviewees maintained that they were aware of anti-Sunni
discrimination in the armed forces prior to enlisting; they joined the
officer corps nonetheless because it promised young rural men with
limited access to lucrative alternatives in the private sector some degree
of social mobility. These similar characteristics, combined with the
shared alienation caused by anti-Sunni discrimination in the military,
have contributed to the noticeable convergence in opinions among my
interviewees.

Sunni Officers in the Syrian Military: The Roots of Grievances

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The origin of Sunni officers’ disaffection in the Syrian military is

threefold: professional, corporatist, and ideational. First, Sunni officers
complain about the preferential treatment received by their Alawi
colleagues. All of my interviewees expressed deep resentment of what
they perceived to be systematic anti-Sunni discrimination in the military
institution. Second, Sunni officers were alienated by the neglect of the
corporate interests of the military as an institution, which contrasted
sharply with efforts deployed to provide all-Alawi units charged
specifically with regime security, and counterbalancing the armed
forces, with state-of-the-art weaponry. Third, the ethos of the Syrian
officer corps is permeated with practices that Sunni officers perceive to
be alien, indeed, offensive, to Islam, such as serving alcohol at social
gatherings and frowning upon the observance of regular prayer. The
regime’s alliance with Iran, against the backdrop of heightened Sunni-
Shiite friction in the Middle East, heightened the suspicions of Sunni
officers, who became increasingly convinced in the decade preceding
2011 that the regime’s ideological discourse was a veneer hiding its
sectarian nature and motives.

The Professional Grievance of Sunni Officers

Up to the early 1970s, Sunnis retained a significant presence in the
Syrian officer corps. Retired Brigadier Muhammad Shahima, who
joined the military academy in 1970, maintains that half of his cohort
consisted of Sunnis.11 Throughout the 1970s, Hafiz al-Asad progres-
sively tilted the balance in favor of his Alawi coreligionists, continuing a
practice that had begun in the preceding decade. The ‘Alawi-tization’ of
the officer corps became more pronounced after the 1979 attack on
Alawi-cadets in Aleppo’s school of artillery by Islamic militants, and
11
Interview with retired Brigadier Mohammad Shamel (army), 7 May, 2014. Antakya,
Turkey.
 The Grievances of Sunni Officers in the Syrian Armed Forces 7

even more so, in the wake of the Hama massacre.12 Since the early
1980s, Alawis have made up 80–85 percent of every new cohort
graduating from the military academy.13 Syria has a Sunni majority,
but the recruitment policies of the Asad regime have prevented the
demographic order from reproducing itself in the officer corps. The
fundamental complaint of Sunni officers is straightforward: Sectarian
stacking largely keeps them outside the military academy and the few of
them who are actually recruited into the officer corps see their careers
evolve in an institution heavily dominated by Alawis. The consequences
of the sectarian imbalance structure the officers’ careers throughout the
three years of study at the military academy, or the five years at the
Asad Academy for Military Engineering, and after graduation.
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The Syrian military academy is divided into 11 departments, the most

important of which are the schools of infantry, artillery, and armor.14
Admission to these schools is sought-after because they provide the
Syrian armed forces with its upper elite: Officers who secure appoint-
ments as regimental commanders hail overwhelmingly from the infantry,
artillery, and armor.15 Not every graduate of these schools is guaranteed
a prominent future position, but being assigned to any other department
of the academy is a serious handicap for ambitious cadets. Students do
not choose their specialization; nor is the system that structures their
distribution among the different schools merit-based. The commander-
ship of the academy determines who in each incoming cohort will study
what and where. Every year, up to 90 per cent of the cadets who join the
privileged schools are Alawis.16 Non-Alawi cadets are then scattered
among the other schools, irrespective of their educational accomplish-
ments prior to enlisting in the military. This practice ensures Alawi
domination of command positions and relegates non-Alawis to a status
of permanent inferiority in the armed forces.
Discriminatory policies continue after graduation. Officers typically
prefer to serve either in non-combat divisions such as the intelligence
agencies (mukhabarat) and administrative departments; or in special
combat units, such as the Republican Guard, the 4th Armored

12
Interview with Lieutenant-Colonel Ahmad Hakim (Asad Academy for Military
Engineering), 8 May, 2014, Antakya, Turkey.
13
This figure was given to me by all of my interviewees; I asked each of them about the
sectarian distribution in his cohort.
14
The other departments include the schools of administration; military technology;
electronic warfare; mining engineering; air defense; military transportation; armament;
and signal corps.
15
Interview with Second-Lieutenant Mamoun Nassar (Signal Corps), 12 May 2014,
Antakya, Turkey
16
Ibid.
 8 Hicham Bou Nassif

Division,17 the Special Forces, and the Airborne Special Forces (Firqat
14 Inzal Jawwi).18 These divisions are preferred destinations for three
reasons: First, especially in the intelligence agencies, the financial
advantages are great. Politicians and businessmen give generous
rewards to the intelligence officers who grant them protection.19
Officers assigned to the mukhabarat also get access to new cars and
free housing. According to Lieutenant-Colonel Yasser Nasser, a former
instructor at the Asad Academy for Military Engineering:

The dream of every single officer is to be recruited in the

intelligence community after graduation from the military acad-
emy. People who are unfamiliar with Syria may have difficulty
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understanding how important it is for us to get access to cars,

let alone free housing. With the kind of salary officers make in the
military, they can spend ten years of their lives saving money and
still not be able to buy a car. The same is true, a fortiori, about
apartments. So the privileges bestowed upon the mukhabarat
officers in terms of cars and housing are very important. To be
able to get married, and settle down, you need to own an
apartment and a car. Mukhabarat officers don’t have to worry
about this; the rest of us do.20

Officers in military administrations can also enrich themselves

because they handle the commercial affairs of the armed forces
pertaining to procurement of arms, food, and other provisions. These
officers have the leeway to make deals with suppliers and reap
kickbacks and commissions on the side.21 Officers in special combat
units also have a myriad of privileges. They, too, get new cars and free
housing. In addition, due to their aura as ‘Bashar’s men’ (the
Republican Guard) or ‘Mahir’s men’ (the 4th Armored Division)22,
they enjoy easy access to bank loans and whatever services they may
17
The 4th Armored Division has gained a fearsome reputation in the ongoing conflict in
Syria as the spearhead of the regime’s repressive machine. The Division was known as
unit 562 in the 1970s. The name was later changed into the Defense Companies (Saraya
al-Difaʿ) when Rifʿat al-Asad, Hafiz al-Asad’s brother, led it the 1980s. After Rifaʿat
fall from grace in 1984 the name was changed again during the 1990s into the 4th
Armored Division. I owe these information to retired Brigadier Mohammad Shamel.
Ibid.
18
Interview with Lieutenant-Colonel Yasser Nasser (Asad Academy for Military
Engineering), 13 June, 2014, Antakya, Turkey.
19
Ibid.
20
Ibid.
21
Interview with Captain Hussam Sabbagh (Air Force), 11 May 2014, Antakya, Turkey.
22
Mahir al-Asad is the younger brother of Bashar al-Asad.
 The Grievances of Sunni Officers in the Syrian Armed Forces 9

require from public institutions.23 At the same time, serving in the

intelligence community, or administrative departments, keeps these
officers away from the hardships of military life. Special combat units,
the Republican Guard, and the 4th Armored Division do face some of
these hardships, but nonetheless they serve in Damascus, Syria’s capital,
which officers prefer to being stationed in the provinces, on the
frontiers, or in the desert.24 Finally, it is simply more prestigious to be
an officer in intelligence agencies, or in special combat units, than to be
one of the ordinary troops. Officers in these privileged divisions are
conscious that they belong to ‘the club of the masters of the country’.25
The competition to join the abovementioned advantaged sectors of the
Syrian military breaks down along identity lines, with Sunnis and other
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non-Alawi officers falling on the losing side. Sectarian stacking in Syria

spans the different subdivisions of the armed forces; Alawi officers are in
the majority everywhere. But intelligence agencies and special combat
units, and to a lesser extent, administrative departments, are almost all-
Alawi divisions. Sectarian stacking is particularly apparent in the
Republican Guard, the 4th Armored Division, the Air Force Intelligence
(al-Mukhabarat al-Jawiyya), and the Military Security (al-Amn al-
ʿAskari). That these units are privileged is unsurprising considering
how critical they are for regime survival. Inevitably, their sectarian
character generates resentment among non-Alawis, however. In the
respective words of Captain Hussam Sabbagh and Major Mahmoud
ʿAbboud, two officers I interviewed in Turkey, Sunnis are only allowed in
the armed forces to fill subaltern positions that do not interest Alawis:

The only place in the air force I know of where Sunnis match, and
maybe outnumber Alawis, is the Tayfour military airport, close to the
borders with Iraq. This base is 90 kilometers away from Homs, deep
in the desert. It is situated in one of the most desolate, godforsaken
regions in Syria. This is where Sunnis in the air force are sent to serve.
What is true about the air force is also true about the army, which is
more dangerous from a regime-security perspective.26
The least attractive service in the armed forces is the air defense
brigades. Air defense bases are scattered all over the national
territory, some in the desert, or in remote areas on the frontier. No
one wants to be assigned there. Furthermore, officers and soldiers
manning air defense are constantly on alert; they get fewer leaves

23
Interview with Captain Hussam Sabbagh, ibid.
24
Mahir al-Asad is the younger brother of Bashar al-Asad.
25
Ibid.
26
Ibid.
 10 Hicham Bou Nassif

than everyone else. That the number of Sunnis serving in the Syrian
military is highest in air defense says a lot about our situation in the
armed forces. Sunnis form less than 15 per cent of the officer corps yet
they handle all the hard work because they constantly need to prove
themselves in order to keep their jobs and get promoted. Alawis, by
contrast, are admitted to the academy for regime-security purposes.
Alawis do not have to spend much effort in order to move up in the
hierarchy; their sectarian identity suffices. 27

Three additional points of friction pertain to study-abroad programs,

promotions, and the sense of disempowerment pervasive among Sunni
officers. The Syrian armed forces maintain cordial relations with the
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Russian, Iranian, and Egyptian militaries; scores of Syrian officers have

studied and received advanced degrees in Moscow, Tehran and Cairo.
Intra-corps competition for study abroad is fierce because graduate
studies facilitate promotion. In addition, officers receive substantially
better salaries for the duration of their missions abroad, which makes
graduate studies financially appealing. The Bureau of Officers Affairs
(Maktab Shu’un al-Dubbat), and the Training Committee (Hay’at al-
Tadrib), select candidates for training missions. The two bureaus are
Alawi-dominated, and particularly resented by Sunni officers, who
maintain that both bureaus privilege Alawis, irrespective of actual
academic achievements.28 On the other hand, while promotions at
junior and mid-ranking positions are automatic, the same is not true
with regard to progress beyond the rank of colonel. Alawi officers are
privileged over non-Alawis; Alawis who have connections with the
political or military elite are more likely to be promoted than their co-
religionists who do not. This issue is particularly frustrating for Sunni
mid-ranking officers, many of whom serve for a decade without being
promoted, by which time they have reached retirement age.29 Finally,
Sunni officers complain that even the few of them who do reach mid-
ranking or senior positions do not get the clout that normally
accompanies such relatively high standing in the military hierarchy.
Real influence with the military is in the hands of Alawi senior officers
and Alawi-dominated intelligence agencies. Soldiers who need a leave of
absence, or hope to be transferred from one brigade or company to
another, ask Alawi officers for help, not Sunnis, because they know
where true power lies.30

27
Interview with Major Mahmoud Abboud (Asad Academy for Military Engineering),
15 May 2014. Antakya, Turkey.
28
Interview with Second-Lieutenant Mamoun Nassar, ibid.
29
Ibid.
30
Ibid.
 The Grievances of Sunni Officers in the Syrian Armed Forces 11

It is interesting to note that the consensus among my interviewees is

that Sunni officers suffered from more discrimination in the military
under Bashar al-Asad than under his father. The officers maintain that
Hafiz al-Asad’s grip over his generals was stronger than Bashar’s.
Whereas Hafiz al-Asad was able to rein in the military elite in order to
keep at least a veneer of inclusiveness in the Syrian officer corps,
Bashar was not able to do so. The regime became more decentralized
under Bashar, with several powerful military barons jockeying for
power and competing to place their Alawi followers throughout
the different sectors of the armed forces. Consequently, Sunnis’
share of prominent appointments in the military shrunk even
more over the last decade.31 Tables 1 to 8 in the annex show the
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extent to which Alawi officers are over-represented within the

Syrian military elite under Bashar al-Asad.

The Corporate Grievance of Sunni Officers

Beyond frustrations pertaining to their careers, Sunni officers accuse the
Syrian regime of ignoring the fundamental corporate interests of the
military. Officers argue that the regime deliberately keeps the armed
forces weak as a fighting force, and breaches the military’s institutional
autonomy by transforming what should have been a national institution
par excellence into what several officers labeled ‘family business.’
Virtually all of my interviewees agree that the combat preparedness
(al-jahiziyya al-qitaliyya) of the Syrian armed forces has been in steady
decline at least since the early 1990s and that it reached abysmal lows
on the eve of the 2011 uprisings. Officers complain about Russian
weaponry that is both old and malfunctioning and yet kept in service.
Air force officers maintain that their Russian MiG-21 and 23 jets lack
proper maintenance and much-needed spare parts, harming their
training.32 Army officers describe their old T-55 and T-62 Russian

31
The informal network of Alawi military barons surrounding Bashar al-Asad, whose
members are blamed for the increased sectarian bias against Sunni officers in the Syrian
armed forces, includes: Mahir al-Asad (4thh Armored Division); Asef Shawkat (Deputy
Minister of Defense until his death in 2012); General ʿAdli Habib (Special Forces);
Major-General ʿIzz al-Din Ismael (Air Force Intelligence); Major-General Jamil Hassan
(Air Force Intelligence); Major-General Rafiq Shehade, (Military Security); Major-
General Hisham Ikhtiyar, (National Security Bureau); Brigadier Zoul al-Himma Shalish
(General Intelligence). Interview with a Colonel in the Special Forces who wished to
remain anonymous. 26 May 2014, Antakya, Turkey.
32
Interview with Brigadier-General Yahiya Hajal (Air Force). 6 June 2014, Antakya,
Turkey.
 12 Hicham Bou Nassif

tanks as ‘piles of junk.’33 Air defense officers say that their equipment is
greatly inferior to that of the Israelis, who have no trouble jamming
Syrian radars, and the whole air defense system, each time Israeli jets fly
over Syria.34 The technological woes of the Syrian armed forces are
blamed on the regime’s insensitivity to the military’s need. Sunni officers
also pinpoint the corruption of Alawi senior officers, whom they accuse
of reaping generous dividends from shadowy deals with providers of
deficient weaponry, unhindered by the authorities.35 My interviewees
stated repeatedly that Alawi officers control the bureau of military
inspection in the Syrian armed forces, and use their positions there to
write false reports about military readiness, in exchange for bribes.
According to Major Iyad Jabra:
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Combat preparedness is good when 80 per cent of a company’s

heavy weaponry (tanks, artillery, and military transport) is
operational. Military inspectors on tours have often found that
less than 40 per cent of the equipment is properly maintained.
Yet they wrote reports stating otherwise, in exchange for bribes
they get from military commanders who want their companies to
look sharp on paper. The corruption of military inspectors is one
of the worst-kept secrets in the armed forces. Alawi senior
officers must know about the practice. But they don’t do much
to stop it because they benefit from it, and also, because they
don’t care.36

The venality of senior officers is also cited as the main reason for the
notorious exploitation of the rank and file. Syria’s is an army of
conscripts; the performance of the Syrian armed forces in war is
dependent on their morale and training. The draftees, however, suffer
from difficult conditions during their military service. They live in
overcrowded barracks lacking in basic hygiene, wear worn-out military
fatigues and boots, and are provided with often defective Russian rifles.
Conscripts sometimes go hungry because senior officers transfer sums
33
Interview with Colonel in the army who did not wish to be named, 7 May 2014, Al
Rihanle, Turkey.
34
Interview with Major ʿIssam Kallas (Air Defense),. 14 May 2014, Antakya, Turkey.
35
‘Go visit the Alawi hinterland and you will find castles built all over the place in Kafroun,
Beit Yashout, Kadmous, and other towns. In very Alawi village you will find fancy villas
built on the best plots of land available. Ask about the owners and you will hear the names
of officers from the Shalish, Makhlouf, Ismael, Douba and Haidar clans. How did these
officers get the money to build these castles? Even a General in the Syrian armed forces does
not make more than 800 dollars per month. They make the money, and we get the deficient
equipment’. Interview with Lieutenant-Colonel Ahmad Hakim, ibid.
36
Interview with Major Iyad Jabra (Air Defense), 7 May 2014, Al Rihanle, Turkey.
 The Grievances of Sunni Officers in the Syrian Armed Forces 13

allocated for food supplies to their own accounts.37 In essence, senior

officers divide conscripts into two categories. Those who hail from rich
families become a source of additional income; they benefit from easy
service conditions and can spend lengthy periods of time outside the
barracks in exchange for bribes.38 Conscripts who hail from poorer
backgrounds are treated as personal servants and chauffeurs. The
conditions for conscripts are a sensitive issue for Sunni officers because
draftees are overwhelmingly Sunni, whereas most senior officers are
Alawi. The matter thus takes on a sectarian undertone that increases the
disaffection of Sunni officers.39 In addition, the demoralization of
Syrian soldiers compounds problems stemming from the technological
inferiority of the Syrian armed forces in terms of combat readiness. In
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the words of Major Mahmoud Abboud and another officer who wished
to remain anonymous:

I have always been convinced that if there would ever be war with
Israel, soldiers on the front would run away, rather than actually
fight. Soldiers know that their tanks can barely move, that their
armament is inadequate, and that generals steal sums allocated for
food. You don’t put a soldier in these conditions and then ask him to
fight and win a battle against a military like the Israeli armed forces.40

Some senior officers can be bought with a packet of cigarettes. Do

you think soldiers would fight and die for such generals, if they are
sent into battle? Had we went to war with the Israelis, they could
have reached Homs within two hours. Then again, why would
Israel fight the Asad regime?41

The neglect of the armed forces was made even more problematic in
light of the preferential treatment lavished on the all-Alawi special
combat units. Air defense officers have asked to be equipped with the
portable surface-to-air 9K38 Igla missile ever since its latest version was
fielded by the Russian armed forces in 2004. When Syria purchased
these missiles from Russia in 2006, however, it was to the exclusive
benefit of the Republican Guard.42 Similarly, T-90 and T-80 Russian
battle tanks, the most effective in Syria’s arsenal, remain the sole

37
Ibid.
38
Ibid.
39
Interview with Major ʿIssam Kallas, Ibid.
40
Interview with Major Mahmoud Abboud,. ibid.
41
Interview with a Brigadier from the Air Force who did not wish to reveal his name, 28
May 2014, Al Rihanle, Turkey.
42
Interview with Major Iyad Jabra, ibid.
 14 Hicham Bou Nassif

property of the Republican Guard and the 4th Armored Division.43 As

a general rule, the new weaponry Syria purchases is used first by the
Republican Guard and the 4th Armored Brigade, and sent to other units
only when it has been outmoded by updates. Thus, armored division in
the military at large only got T-62 Russian tanks when the Republican
Guard and the 4th Armored Division were equipped with T-72 tanks;
the same happened when T-72s were replaced with T-80s. Officers
complain bitterly of being provided with only the ‘leftovers’ of the all-
Alawi companies.44 Some officers suspect the regime of weakening the
armed forces on purpose, in order to reduce their ability to trigger
coups, and keep the intra-military correlation of force tilted in favor of
the all-Alawi special units.45 Other officers stress that the Republican
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Guard and the 4th Armored Division are in charge of the regime’s
security, whereas national defense per se is incumbent on the armed
forces at large. That the regime should privilege the special units over
the regular armed forces reveals where its true priority lies; it also
discredits the regime’s cherished discourse of steadfastness in the
struggle against Israel.46
That both Hafiz al-Asad and Bashar al-Asad have tended to appoint
family members in commandership positions in the armed forces exacer-
bated the frustration of Sunni officers. Hafiz al-Asad began appointing
relatives in senior military positions when he was still Defense Minister,
before he seized power in 1970. He continued doing so after he became
president. Asad’s brother, Rifʿat, became commander of the powerful
paramilitary Defense Units (Saraya al-Difaʿ) deployed in Damascus, and
his other brother, Jamil, led a special section in the Defense Units in charge
with securing the Alawi hinterland. In addition, ‘Adnan al-Asad, a cousin
of the president, led the Struggle Companies (Saraya al-Siraʿ), yet another
paramilitary unit deployed in Damascus. Finally, ‘Adnan Makhluf, Asad’s
brother-in-law, was in charge of the regime’s Republican Guard.47 In the
early 1990s, Asad’s eldest son, Bassel, who was being groomed to succeed
his father, became a staff member of the Presidential Guard and a
commander of an elite armored brigade, although he was only a Major
in the armed forces. The ‘All in the family’ tactics did not change when
Hafiz al-Asad passed away. The non-exhaustive list of family members
appointed in senior positions under Bashar includes his brother Mahir, the
defacto commander of the 4th Armored Division; his cousin, Zou al-
Himma Shalish, in charge of units responsible for the safety of the

43
Ibid.
44
Interview with Brigadier Yahiya Hajal, ibid.
45
Interview with Colonel Maher Nawwar (Air Force), 15 May 2014, Antakya, Turkey.
46
Interview with Lieutenant-Colonel Ahmad Abboud, ibid.
47
See James Quinlivan, ibid.
 The Grievances of Sunni Officers in the Syrian Armed Forces 15

president and his family; another cousin, Hafiz Makhluf, who heads unit
251 in the General Intelligence and is widely considered to be the real
commander of that service; yet another cousin, Hilal al-Asad, was
commander of the Military Police in the 4th Armored Division; and
Asad’s brother-in-law, Asif Shawkat, the strong man in the intelligence
apparatus until his death in 2012.48 Sunni officers maintain that Hafiz and
Bashar al-Asad have transformed the military into an appendix of the
ruling elite, instead of being an institution on its own.49

The Ideational Grievance of Sunni Officers

In addition to material grievances, virtually all of my interviewees
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complained about what they perceive to be an aggressive anti-religious

ethos within the armed forces. The overwhelming majority of Sunni
officers I met during fieldwork were openly hostile to the Syrian Muslim
Brothers, and other Islamist formations in their country, as well as in
the Arab world at large. Yet the officers are deferential to Islam and
tend to be socially conservative. Alawi officers frown upon any hint of
religiosity among their Sunni colleagues, including daily prayer, which
is a pillar of Islam. The ensuing friction between Sunni officers, and
what they sense to be Alawi sectarianism hiding behind a veneer of
secularism, stokes Sunni disaffection within the Syrian armed forces.
According to Second-Lieutenant Mamoun Nassar and Lieutenant-
Colonel Ahmed Abdel-Qader, respectively:

I never dared to pray in my neighborhood’s mosque during leave

days, let alone praying during service. If an informer had seen me in
the mosque, I would have been immediately summoned to Military
Security to explain why I was present at a place that could harbor
extremists and jihadis. In fact, I always avoided parking my car in the
vicinity of mosques, just to be on the safe side. I cannot over-
emphasize my frustration.50

48
See Hazem Saghieh, Al-Baʿath al-Souri. Tarikh Moujaz (Beirut: Dar al-Saqi 2011);
and Sobhi Hadidi, “Halakat al-Asad al-Amniya, Hatmyat al-Tafakouk. . . Baʿd Ikhtibar
al-Nar”, Jadaliya, 31 July 2011, http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/2280/%D8%
B5%D8%A8%D8%AD%D9%8A.
49
In the words of one of my interviewees: ‘Until 1963, the Syrian armed forces were a
national institution. The Ba’athi coup that year transformed the military into a party
militia. Asad’s so-called “corrective movement” in 1970 then changed the militia into
family business’. Interview with a Brigadier (army) who did not wish to be named, 28
June 2014,. Antakya, Turkey.
50
Interview with Second-Lieutenant Mamoun Nassar.Ibid.
 16 Hicham Bou Nassif

In order to advance in the hierarchy, an officer has to be morally

loose. In 1993, an intelligence officer summoned me to his office.
He asked me: ‘If I go visit you, will your wife be present?’. I
explained that I am from the Syrian countryside and that it is not
in our traditions that women be present when male guests who are
not accompanied by their wives are visiting. I told him that if he
visits me unaccompanied by his wife, mine would still greet him,
but would not keep us company. He retorted that this is a
backward ethos unbecoming of an officer.51

My interviewees complained that their Alawi superiors expect them

to drink whiskey in social events and publicly mock those Sunni officers
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who abstain from doing so in order to conform to the teachings of

Islam. Several of my interviews maintain that Sunni officers who occupy
upper positions in the hierarchy brag openly about consuming alcohol
and sometimes keep bottles of liquor in their offices within barracks as
a public statement that they are only ‘nominally Sunni’”.52 Another
point of contention is the Hijab, the headscarf worn by Muslim women
as a symbol of modesty and chastity. The preference of most officers I
met goes to having their wives and daughters wear the veil. However,
the Hijab signals attachment to religious doctrine which is precisely the
wrong message to send if an officer is to climb the echelons in the armed
forces. Thus, some officers chose to have their wives not wear the veil in
order to remain on the safe side with the regime; others refused to do
the same irrespective of the consequences on their career. My inter-
viewees concur that the regime’s policies and suspicions fostered an
artificial contradiction between two goals they all hold dear, namely,
being loyal to Syria and the military institution, on the one hand, and
observing the rites of Islam, on the other.
This dimension of Sunni malaise is distinct from the competition over
resources and advancement within the officer corps, although not
completely unrelated to it. Despite sectarian stacking policies, the
Asad regime did promote some non-Alawi officers to higher positions
in the military, in order to mitigate the sectarian image of its special
combat units and intelligence agencies. The regime thus signaled to
Sunnis in the military that professional advancement remains possible
for a handful of them, provided that they adopt an irreligious, and
preferably, anti-religious, public persona. In order to preserve their
chances of being promoted, but also to avoid raising the suspicion of
the much-feared intelligence agencies, Sunni officers had to hide their

51
Interview with Lieutenant-Colonel Ahmed Abdel-Qader (Asad Academy for Military
Engineering). 8 May, 2014. Antakya, Turkey.
52
Interview with Major Iyad Shamsy (Air Defense). Al Rihanle, Turkey, 7 May 2014.
 The Grievances of Sunni Officers in the Syrian Armed Forces 17

moral and religious preferences; they nurtured a deep sense of humilia-

tion and resentment at being so obliged.
The discrediting of the regime’s ideological message heightened
ideational frictions within the officer corps. Hafiz al-Asad tried to
legitimize his rule by taking a hardline stance vis-à-vis the Arab-Israeli
conflict and stressing his dedication to the Palestinian cause. Bashar al-
Asad also emphasized his regime’s commitment to the regional ‘axis of
resistance’ opposed to American and Israeli hegemony in the Middle
East. Whether Sunni officers were ever convinced that Hafiz al-Asad
was indeed a national Arab hero is questionable. My interviewees all
maintain that they joined the military academy because it offered good
prospects for young men hailing from the rural lower middle classes,
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not because they believed that the armed forces were being prepared to
defend Syria or to liberate Palestine. A combination of factors made the
regime’s ideological claims appear even more dubious under Bashar al-
Asad, however: First, as mentioned above, the combat preparedness of
the armed forces deteriorated significantly in the last decade. Israeli jets
flew repeatedly into Syrian airspace; the Syrian regime refrained from
reacting, even in the wake of the Israeli attack on the Kubar base, where
Syria was allegedly developing nuclear capacities, in 2007. Second, as
Iran’s profile grew in Middle East politics, Syria looked increasingly
overshadowed by Tehran. Syria’s apparent subordination to Tehran,
just like its military weakness, corroded the credibility of the regime’s
rhetorical bravado.53 The heightening of sectarian tension in the region
in the wake of the breakdown of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003, and
the assassination of the (Sunni) Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri
in 2005, did little to endear the alliance with Iran to Sunni officers’
hearts.54
The officers’ alienation was compounded by the unease stemming
from the need to remain constantly on their guard in interactions with
Alawi colleagues. Although some cross-sectarian friendships did
develop in the officer corps, they remained the exception rather than
the rule. In general, sectarian relations in the armed forces are marred
by mutual suspicion. Students in the military academy befriend
members of their own sect. Rooms in dormitories are informally
segregated by sect.55 Sunni officers know that informers are to be
found among Sunnis, too, but they tend to assume that all Alawi
officers write intelligence reports about their non-Alawi colleagues. Not
surprisingly, in an environment where mistrust is so high, the sense of
military camaraderie is low. My interviewees bemoaned what they

53
Interview with Colonel Maher Nawwar, ibid.
54
Interview with Lieutenant-Colonel Yasser Nasser, ibid.
55
Interview with Captain Issam Kallas, ibid.
 18 Hicham Bou Nassif

described as the imperative of ‘putting on a permanent mask’ in

presence of Alawis; they repeatedly described themselves as ‘second-
class’ and maintained that their Alawi subordinates were more influen-
tial than they in the armed forces. There is a consensus among the
officers I met that military socialization makes officers’ sectarian
consciousness more pronounced because it gives Alawis a sense of
impunity and humiliates Sunnis.
Fear of the omnipresent intelligence agencies deepened officers’
malaise. It goes beyond the scope of this article to provide a detailed
study of how the much-feared Syrian mukhabarat penetrates the
armed forces. Suffice it to say that of the myriad of security agencies
keeping a tight grip on Syria, two organizations control the military,
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the Air Force Intelligence (al-Mukhabarat al-Jawwiyya), and the

Military Security (al-Amn al-ʿAskari). The former is in charge of
the air force and aerial defense brigades, while the latter handles the
rest of the military.56 Intelligence agencies keep a regional head-
quarters (farʿ) in each of Syria’s 14 provinces. To each regiment,
brigade, and company of the regular armed forces, they assign a
security officer (dabit amn), who heads a network of secret informers
planted in the unit for which he is responsible.57 All Syrian officers
live in the shadow of intelligence networks, but Sunnis in particular
fear being denounced as religious or conservative. They serve under a
sword of Damocles they sense permanently hanging over their
heads.58

Conclusion
As suggested in the preceding analysis, the reasons for Sunni officers’
disaffection with the Asad regime were threefold: professional,
corporatist and ideational. Sectarian stacking was central to the
Syrian regime’s survival strategy; consequently, the Syrian officer
corps remained skewed in favor of Alawis throughout the last
decades. This meant that Sunnis were severely under-represented at
all levels of the officer corps – namely, in operational and intelligence
positions. Frustration over grim professional prospects was pervasive
among Sunni officers. The latter’s alienation from the regime was
compounded by what they perceived to be an intentional neglect of
56
The other two main intelligence agencies in Syria are the General Intelligence (al-
Moukhabarat al-ʿAmma), and the Political Security (al-Amn al-Siassi). Both handle
non-military intelligence; the latter also is in charge of the Syrian Police.
57
Security Officers answer to regional intelligence headquarters, which report in turn to
central directorates in Damascus.
58
Interview with Captain Hussam Sabbagh, Ibid.
 The Grievances of Sunni Officers in the Syrian Armed Forces 19

the military in favor of praetorian units. Their disaffection was

exacerbated by the anti-religious ethos pervasive within the military,
as well as the discredit of the regime’s secular and Pan-Arab
discourse which rang increasingly hollow in the decade preceding
the 2011 uprising. The defection of Sunni officers in the wake of the
2011 popular mobilizations and ensuing repression reflects their
alienation from the regime, combined with their refusal to slaughter
civilians – mostly fellow Sunnis – in order to uphold the status-quo.
This study has focused on the grievances of Sunni officers, but
more should be done to investigate the micro-dynamics of their
defection from the military. The estimations I collected from my
interviewees pertaining to the overall number of officers in the Syrian
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military range from 50,000 to 60,000. The highest assessment of the

number of officers who defected from the Syrian armed forces in the
wake of the 2011 mobilizations is 3,000. In effect, defection
remained a Sunni phenomenon; very few non-Sunnis joined the
uprising (i.e. Christians; Druze; Ismailis) and almost no Alawi officer
did. Sectarian stacking originally aimed at stemming the tide of
coups in the once-turbulent Syrian officer corps. But when the
challenge to the Asad regime came from a popular mobilization
that escalated into insurgency, the same coup-proofing tactic proved
efficient at keeping the officer corps essentially cohesive, and over-
whelmingly loyal.
My interviewees estimated that, roughly, half of Syria’s Sunni officers
had defected by the time I conducted fieldwork in summer 2014. Why
did some Sunni officers defect whereas other Sunni officers remained in
the loyalist camp? This is an important question that remains unan-
swered. One limitation of this study needs to be reiterated: It was
logistically impossible for me to meet those Sunni officers who remained
on the loyalist side of the Syrian civil war. That the Asad regime
manipulates sectarian identities in the military has long been established
by the literature and the evidence documenting anti-Sunni discrimina-
tion is overwhelming. It is highly unlikely that additional interviews
with loyalist officers would have fundamentally altered this thesis upon
which this study rests. However, while the data provided by my
interviewees is trustworthy, the officers I met could only speculate
about the motivations of their Sunni colleagues who stayed on the
regime’s side. The implication of being able to meet only those Sunni
officers who successfully defected is obvious: The circumstances sur-
rounding Sunni officers in the opposite camp are not covered by this
paper.
Similarly, while bonds of sectarian solidarity and fear of Sunni
retribution must have kept Alawi officers in the loyalist camp, the
reasons why very few Christian, Druze and Ismaeli officers defected
 20 Hicham Bou Nassif

need to be investigated. The data I collected does not suggest that

Christian, Druze and Ismaeli officers were privileged by the regime as
members of ‘allied’ communities – contrary to a pervasive but empiri-
cally unfounded perception which implies otherwise. It could be that
Syria’s officers hailing from a minority background prefer the Asad
regime to potentially Islamist-dominated alternatives, but this too is
mere conjecture. Additional fieldwork needs to be conducted in order to
uncover the sectarian dynamics of the officer corps, prior to, and since,
the 2011 turning point.

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Annex

Table 1. Ministers of Defense and Chiefs of Staff of the Syrian Armed Forces under
Bashar al-Asad by Sectarian Affiliation59

Ministers of Defense Sectarian Chiefs of Staff Sectarian

(2000 – 2011) Affiliation (2000– 2011) Affiliation

General Mustafa Tlas Sunni General Hikmat Shihabi Sunni

General Hassan Turkmani Sunni General Hasan Turkmani Sunni
General ʿAli Habib Alawi General Dawoud Rajha Christian
General Dawoud Rajha Christian General Fahd Jasim Sunni
General Fahd al-Furayj Sunni General ʿAli Ayyoub Alawi

59
I asked every one of my interviewees to help me collect the data in tables 1 to 8.
Particularly helpful in that regard was Colonel ʿAbdel ʿAziz Kanʿan to whom I owe a
debt of gratitude. Lieutenant-Colonel Yasser Jaber, Brigadier-General Mohammad
Shahima, Lieutenant-Colonel Nasha’at Haj Ahmad, and two other Brigadier-Generals
who did not wish to be named also helped me collect data that appear in tables 1 to 8,
and asked their colleagues to do the same. Note that the place of origin is the
fundamental identity-related marker that officers’ use to identify each other’s sectarian
affiliation. Officers hailing from, say, al-Rastan, are likely to be Sunnis; their colleagues
from Latakia likely to be Alawis, whereas officers from Suweida, or the “Valley of the
Christians” region, likely to be Druze and Christians respectively. Names also matter:
An officer called “Georges” or “Elias” is clearly Christian, whereas “Omar” is Sunni,
and “Ali” or “Hussein” likely to be Alawi. Family names are an additional indicator: A
“Makhlouf” is Alawi whereas a “Qabbani” can only be Sunni. For officers to identity
each other’s’ sectarian affiliation is a relatively easy task.
 22 Hicham Bou Nassif

Table 2. Commanders of The Syrian Armed Forces on the Eve of the 2011 Uprising by
Sectarian Affiliation60

Sectarian
Sectors Officers Affiliation

Division 1 1)-Major-General Yusuf al-Asad (Commander) Alawi

Division 3 1)-Major-General Naʿim Sulayman (Commander) Alawi
2)-Major-General Salim Rashid Barakat Alawi
Division 4 1)- Major-General ʿAli ʿAmmar (Commander) Alawi
2)-Major-General Muhammad ‘Ali Dargham Alawi
(Deputy Commander)
Division 5 1)- Major-General Suhayl al-Hasan (Commander) Alawi
2)- Brigadier ʿAli ʿAmmar (Deputy Commmander) Alawi
Division 7 1)-Major-General Muhammad Khayrat (Commander) Sunni
Downloaded by [Hicham Bou Nassif] at 23:26 05 August 2015

Division 9 1)- Major-General Mudar Yusuf (Commander) Alawi

2)- Brigadier Ahmad Yunis al-ʿUqda Alawi
Division 10 1)- Major-General ʿUmar Ribʿawi Commander) Sunni
Division 11 1)- Major-General Jihad Sulaytin (Commander) Alawi
2)- Major-General Nasib Abu Mahmud (Deputy Commander) Alawi
Division 14 1)- Major-General Husayn Husayn (Commander) Alawi
2)-Major-General Muhammad Suwaydan (Deputy Commander) Alawi
Division 15 1)- Major-General ʿAli Yusuf (Commander) Alawi
2)- Brigadier Ramadan Ramadan (Deputy Commander) Alawi
Division 17 1)- Major-General Isbir ʿAbbud (Commander) Alawi
2- Major-General Badr ‘Aqil (Deputy Commander) Alawi
Division 18 1)- Major-General Wajih Mahmud (Commander) Alawi
2)- Major-General ʿAzzam al-Misri Sunni
Navy 1)- Admiral Muhammad al-Ahmad Alawi
Air Force 1)- Major-General Ahmad Ballul Alawi

Table 3. Directors of Syrian Intelligence Agencies in Charge of Controlling the Armed

Forces under Bashar al-Asad by Sectarian Affiliation61

Directors of the Military

Directors of the Air Force Sectarian Security Sectarian
Intelligence (2000 – 2011) Affiliation (2000 – 2011) Affiliation

Major-General Ibrahim Alawi Major-General Hasan Khalil Alawi

Huwayji
Major-General ʿIzz al-Din Alawi Major-General Asif Shawkat Alawi
Ismaʿil
Major-General ʿAbd al- Alawi Major-General ʿAbd al-Fattah Alawi
Fattah Qudsiyya Qudsiyya
Major-General Jamil Alawi Major-General Rafiq Shihada Alawi
Hasan

60
Ibid.
61
Ibid.
 The Grievances of Sunni Officers in the Syrian Armed Forces 23

Table 4. Commanders of the Republican Guard and the Fourth Armored Division
under Bashar al-Asad, by Sectarian Affiliation62

Commanders of the
Republican Guard Sectarian Commanders of the Fourth Sectarian
(2000 – 2011) Affiliation Armored Brigade (2000 – 2011) Affiliation

Major-General ʿAli Hasan Alawi Major-General Mahmud Alawi

ʿAmmar
Major-General Nur al-Din Alawi Major-General ʿAli ʿAmmar Alawi
Naqqar
Major-General Shuʿayb Alawi Major-General Muhammad ʿAli Alawi
Sulayman Dargham
Major-General Badiʿ ʿAli Alawi
Downloaded by [Hicham Bou Nassif] at 23:26 05 August 2015

Table 5. Commanders of the Special Forces and the Airborne Special Forces under
Bashar al-Asad by Sectarian Affiliation63

Commanders of the Special Sectarian Commanders of the Airborne Sectarian

Forces (2000 – 2011) Affiliation Special Forces (2000 – 2011) Affiliation

General ʿAli Habib Alawi Major-General ʿAli Sulayman Alawi

Major-General Subhi Sunni Major-General Muhammad Alawi
al-Tayyib Husayn al-Husayn
Major-General Ra’if Dallul Alawi
Major-General Juma Alawi
ʿal-Ahmad
Major-General Fu’ad Alawi
Hammuda

Table 6. Commanders of the Air Force and the Air Defense under
Bashar al-Asad by Sectarian Affiliation64

Commanders of the Air Force (2000 – 2011) Sectarian Affiliation

Major-General ʿAli Mahmud Alawi

Hazim al-Khadra Sunni
Major-General Ahmad al-Hattab Alawi
Major-General ʿAbd al-Salam Lahham Sunni
Major-General ʿIsam Hallaq Sunni
Major-General Ahmad Ballul Alawi

62
Ibid.
63
Ibid.
64
Ibid.
 24 Hicham Bou Nassif

Table 7. Subcommanders of the Special Forces on the Eve of the 2011 Uprising by
Sectarian Affiliation65

Sector Officer Affiliation

Company 35 1)-Brigadier Muhsin al-Qabawi (Commander) Alawi

Company 41 1)- Brigadier ʿAdnan Dib (Commander) Alawi
2)- Brigadier Haytham Ibrahim Alawi
(Deputy Commander)
Company 45 1)- Brigadier Ghassan ʿAfif (Commander) Alawi
2)- Brigadier Muhammad Ma‘ruf (Deputy Commander) Alawi
Company 46 1)- Brigadier Halim ʿAllush (Commander) Alawi
2)- Brigadier Akram Yusuf (Deputy Commander) Alawi
Company 47 1)- Brigadier Wahib Haydar (Commander) Alawi
2)- Brigadier ʿAdnan al-Fayy (Deputy Commander) Alawi
Downloaded by [Hicham Bou Nassif] at 23:26 05 August 2015

Company 48 1)- Brigadier Muhammad Mayya (Commander) Alawi

Company 53 1)- Brigadier Zuhayr Sulayman (Commander) Alawi
2)- Brigadier Hamza Nawfal (Deputy Commander) Alawi
Company 147 1)- Brigadier Ihsan Ahmad (Commander) Alawi

Table 8. Subcommanders of the Airborne Special Forces on the Eve of the 2011
Uprising by Sectarian Affiliation66

Sectors Officers Affiliation

Company 554 1)- Brigadier Sulayman al-ʿAwaji (Commander) Sunni

2)- Brigadier Muhammad al-Hajal (Deputy Commander) Alawi
Company 556 1)- Brigadier Tamim ʿAli (Commander) Alawi
2- Brigadier Ahmad Sa’ouf deputy Commander) Alawi
Company 636 1)- Brigadier Nayif Mashhadani (Commander) Sunni
2)- Brigadier Usama Saʿd (Deputy Commander) Alawi
Artillery 1)- Brigadier Muhammad Habib (Commander) Alawi

65
Ibid.
66
Ibid.