When considering Sunni involvement in the Alawite government , it is also essential to understand how this could affect the most powerful institutions in Syria , i . e . the Baath Party along with its internal structures and the army . Certainly , a shift of power in either of these institutions could cause instability of the political regime in Syria and pose a serious threat to the state . On the other hand , remembering that pan-Arabism was one of the founding ideologies of Baath , it would create controversy if Sunnis were totally left out of the government . As a result , Assad faced a serious dilemma and saw the possible solution of this issue in balancing the two : allowing some Sunnis to engage with the government on the one hand and limiting the scope of their operations and influence on the other to maintain the political power that seemed to be the key for stability in Syria .
As a result , it becomes evident that Hafez al-Assad succeeded in bringing stability to the Syrian political landscape due to his cautious domestic and foreign policies . He prioritized the stabilization of relations with Israel and other states of the Arabian Peninsula , but at the same time aimed at avoidinggreater socialization of society . Being a representative of the Alawite minority , Assad introduced privileged opportunities for Alawites and proposed confrontational ideas such as secularism and the ideology of pan-Arabism . It is essential to note that it is during the presidency of Assad that there were a significant rise of Islamist movements . However , Assad succeeded in containing the Islamist opposition via numerous means . Last but not least , Assad prioritized the development of two institutions , namely the Baath Party and the Syrian Army , which were both dominated by the Alawite minority and served as tools for maintaining control over the Syrian state .
From Escalations to Civil War
The Syrian politics was heavily affected by the death of Hafez al-Assad , which marked the beginning of the third phase in Syria ’ s development as a state . Bashar al-Assad , his son — the next president of Syria , was challenged by several actors in both domestic and international entities . In addition to those challenges , he inherited a legacy that included several unresolved issues in Syria , which have had negative impacts on Syrian politics and exacerbated the civil war .
Was there a way to avoid the civil war in Syria ? It has been commonly argued that there would have been such a possibility if Hafez al-Assad had introduced more institutional reforms and structural improvements . However , as the continuity of Syrian state-building shows , there were a lot of disruptions in the process due to several factors that could not have been avoided 27 .
27
Van Dam Nikolaos , Destroying a Nation : The Civil War in Syria , 2017 , 130-156
17