Syrian Civil War: Inevitable Exchange Management

Since the Ba'th Party and its military allies seized power in Syria on March 3, 1963, the struggle between Ba'thism and political Islam has continued unabated. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Muslim Brotherhood incited several violent insurrections against the Ba'th regime. The Islamist rebels, however, failed, in large part because they were fragmented and lacked a robust leadership base. By contrast, the regime remained cohesive, utilizing its nationalist militancy and its populist social contract to legitimize its rule—a regime that was hoisted by its potent security apparatus originally led by Alawite troops who, as a political and demographic minority, had a massive stake in its survival.' This tension reached its pinnacle in 1982 when Ba’thist leader Hafez alAssad leveled the Islamists in Hama, killing fifteen to thirty thousand rebels.?