“The Alawitization” of the army in a recent study… this is how Assad built an army of killing and looting.
The Omran Center for Strategic Studies presented an analytical paper revealing how the Assad regime carried out the “Alawitization” of the army—facilitating control over it through Alawite sectarianism. The center pointed out that Assad’s regime distributed the forty most important military positions among his relatives, members of his sect, and areas of their concentration, especially his family’s hometown of Qardaha and its neighbor Jableh.