Syrian Army - Shia Or Sunni?!

[Kazmi_202 550]

Salam,

Found the following article, it states that the war in Syria is not 100% divided across sectarian lines, as the Salafis will have us believe. There are a number of Sunni's who are against the FSA and who form the backbone of the Syrian army.....

http://www.al-monito...n-analysis.html

Edited June 2, 2013 by Kazmi_202

[kim.tinkerbell 1,251]

Offcourse their are sunnies that support bashar and their surly is sunnis that dont approve or support the salafi monsters.

The bbc and alaribya worint be publishing this news...

[Mousa54321 60]

There are Sunnis that support Bashar but they are a minority.

Bashar doesn't trust Sunni soliders and they have not been used in battle for a very long time now.

That is why the National Defense Froce has been established, which is an Alwait milita numbering in tens of thousands.

Also, the army units that are used are the special forces, which are mainly alawaits. This also explains why Bashar needed the assistance of Hizb, Iran, and Iraq in sending volunteers.

[pakistanyar 260]

^ And the FSA needs help from Al-Qaeda, Chechyens, Qatar, Saudi and USA. If 90% of the country was actually against the gov. then this rebellion wouldn't have lasted 2 years. Majority of the Sunnis favor Assad over the FSA.

[GreyMatter 1,556]

Well most middle-class Sunnis have been inclined with Bashar al-Assad from the beginning. The Syrian Arab Army compromises of Sunni soldiers and Alawites as well.

The core commanders are Alawites along with the elite and often ruthless special forces called the Sabiha, they are usually Alawites but many happen to be Sunnis as well.

Many high ranking officers are on the front lines with their troops, most are Sunni. The media especially al-Jazerra, al-Arabiyya etc make us believe in a fairytale that only the Alawites are in the army along with a handful of Sunni soldiers.

The point to be noted is that the Alawites only account for 15% of the country's population, and it is impossible for them to hold onto to all of Syria, should they be the sole representatives of the Assad's army.

The media loves to paint this war as: Sunni vs Alawites+Shia, when in reality it is Sunni vs Sunni with some Alawites, and Christian elements from Syria. The financial backers are Iran, Russia on one side and GCC Gulf Arab States, Turkey and the U.S on the other.

The weapon manufactures in Russia and U.S must be real happy, their profits are to be an all-time high due to this war.

If you see General Fahd Jassem al-Freij is actually the current Commander-in-Chief of the Army and the Armed Forces, and yes, he is a Sunni, like some other commanding officers.

Defections did take place, but now defections are a rarity, Sunnis still make a good majority of the Syrian Arab Army.

If what the media says was true, and the Sunnis were openly against al-Assad, he would have had fell down as quickly as Ghaddafi, since his country and almost everyone was against him.

Even the Grand Mufti of Syria Ahmed Badreddin Hassoun ofcourse a Sunni with the Shafi'i fiqh is alligned with Assad, his son was even killed allegedly by the rebels.

Another highly influential cleric of the Arab world was al-Bouti, another Sunni famous among his great works, one of them was La Madhabiyyaa (a refutation to the Salafis, hence the title) he was killed a few months ago, his final moments was urging his fellow men to join the Syrian army.

The media also reports that Hezbollah are in full-blown war in Syria with their soldiers as far deep till Aleppo, when in reality they have ~ around 2000 fighters at best concentrated in Quseyr only, this is a strategic town near the Lebanese-Syria border, linked with the numerous nearby Shi'a villages in Syria that were attacked by the rebels in the past.

What's more interesting is that Assad's own Alawite uncle Riad al-Assad was the one who created the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and served as a core commander until his legs were blown off in an attack. He is still alive but side-tracked.

Assad's Baathist regime is cruel indeed, Saddam was a Baathi as well, the initial protests were actually genuine in trying to rid a dictator's dynasty for decades but it is clearly hijacked by many radical elements including the better financial and well-armed al-Nusra Front, who carry a threat, just like their brethren (Al-Shabaab; Islamic State of Iraq; Taliban; Boko Haram etc) wrecking up other countries.

Edited June 3, 2013 by GreyMatter

[Qa'im]

The Syrian army consists mostly of `Alawis, but there are also Christians, Druze, and Sunnis.

[Kazmi_202 550]

Until we can get hold of some official stats it difficult to pinpoint exact numbers. What is strange is that according to the below extract from the article, even the Rebels being interviewed by a neutral suggest the majority of army is Sunni:

However, the Syrian crisis lasted much longer than anyone expected. We must understand how it is that Assad’s regime still stands its ground. Yet a sectarian interpretation of the conflict does not help us to understand the reason the ruling regime in Damascus has surprisingly persisted for so long. A militant in Deir al-Zour told me, “Until now, the majority of the Syrian army (around 60%) are Sunni.” When I asked him why they are not divided, he gave me two typical answers: the soldiers are isolated from the outside world and do not watch Al-Jazeera, only getting their news from the [semi-official] Addounia TV channel. And their commanders have spoon-fed them that the battle is against jihadists who are backed by foreign conspirators. Here, we can only say that it is hard to believe that the soldiers are really so isolated in the current era of communications, especially two years after the outbreak of the conflict.

Read more: http://www.al-monito...l#ixzz2V9AUhJMB

In conclusion, its not as simple as Alawi/Shia vs Sunni...there is a lot more to the story then that.

Edited June 3, 2013 by Kazmi_202

[sayedamir2000 249]

(bismillah)

(salam)

Well how they can be shias if they fight against Syrian alawis and Hesbollah? How they can be shias when a soldier of FSA rips apart killed soldier and start to eat his heart? How they can be shias when FSA kill own soldiers that are clothed to look like Syria's army and kill them? How they can be shias when some salafi sheikh give "fitna" that FSA can rape women that are not sunnis with name of "sexual jihad" which is unbelievable and very ridiculous? FSA is helped by many western goverments to topple down shia presence in whole Middle East to give control to Israel.

Why nobody cared about Bahrain shia's of so called uprising? But when it happened in Algeria, Egypt, Libya and other countries the world turned like upside down and everyone rushed to help, but when it comes to Bahrain shia people when they need most of help nobody came to them and supported them? Doesn't this look like sunni governments working with western countries? I don't mean all sunni people are like that, there are good sunni people, but its very sad that shia's has very difficult in Islam all the time.

[Qa'im]

There's undoubtedly Sunnis in the military and intelligence, and Syria is a country with mandatory conscription. But the assertion that 60 to even 80% of the military is Sunni is a wild exaggeration. Anyone who has been in the military can confirm that even before the war, it was about half `Alawi and half everything else (Sunnis, Druze, Christians, Shi`a - possibly in that order). Non-Sunnis were given preference in the special units and higher ranks, because since the 1970s, the Ba`th have been suspicious of Islamist infiltrators in the military and regime. This escalated after the 1982 Hama massacre. In the last two years, many Sunnis in the military have defected, retired, or escaped the country. Of the 50,000 or so defections in the last two years, the vast majority were Sunni. At the same time, many domestic `Alawis have joined the SAA. And, as you can see in Qusayr, Damascus, and Aleppo, much of the ground operations against the FSA and Nusra have been conducted by foreign Shi`a militias. Of course there are Sunnis in the SAA, but they no longer play a significant role in the armed forces.

Edited June 4, 2013 by Qa'im