@skinster
Citations needed. I know the Alawites are the main sect in power but the govt includes people from other sects too and I don't know about any segregation in Syria imposed on the people like what is taking place in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
1- It's in their name. The Baath party is a national socialist party, i.e fascist.
Arab nationalism and Socialism to be specific.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ba%27ath_Party2- There isn't any physical segregation, simply higher positions only goes to specific people and no one else.
It's segregated in terms of political and social rights and liberties.
The books I named explain it in detail.
I've read a few books on Syria, know Syrians - inc amongst the opposition - and understand what was happening in Syria in 2011 wasn't a "revolution". Who believes that in 2019?
It was, 2011 was when the protests began where 100s of thousands went on to protest the government.
The war began when a part of the army split off and attempted a coup (i.e the FSA) which was in early 2012.
Islamists later entered the picture from Jordan in late 2012 and early 2013 then from Iraq in 2013 and onward.
As for people escaping Syria during war-time, I guess so many Syrians hate on Syria so much that they keep returning home after the SAA/Russia etc. continuously gained back territory over the last couple of years. Weird they'd do that even when offered refuge with no questions asked in states like Germany.
Baathist who went abroad escaping Islamists are indeed returning to Syria, others are not.
There are still 5 million out of Syria even when the war effectively ended in most major areas all the way in late 2017.
How many people and when was this?
There are between 30-38 million Syrians in the world( carrying Syrian nationality and passport), 18 and a half of them only live in Syria.
For the when;
The main migration waves began in the late 1950s as the Baath party along with several other nationalist and socialist parties were rising and fighting, and continued on until this day with migration generally skyrocketing around the same time there happens to be a purge and consolidation of powers in the country or any type of uprisings.
For the exact numbers leaving Syria per year or left in total, We can't fully know since the Syrian government doesn't release these data, we can only know from studies looking at other countries stats and data.
Currently, most estimates put the total number of Syrians between 30-38 million Syrians.
I take more to the estimates of Dr. Mohamad Jamal Barot who did a study on the topic and found there are 9.8 million Syrian expats as of 2010, and in the same study he puts the annual migration rate at over 10 per thousand or in other words, 1% of Syria's population left the country each year.
(EDIT: The annual migration rate is for the last decade as of 2010, meaning 2000-2010).
He works for the Arab center for research and policy studies.
Here is the link to his profile, the studies are the ones from 2011. (one study, but listed in 5 parts)
However, I've been looking for half an hour and couldn't find an English translation, so you have to translate as you read through.
https://www.dohainstitute.org/ar/Pages/ ... org/ar&#k=How about post things about what I'm actually debating rather than telling me to look stuff up. I'm supposed to do your work for you?
He's the biggest example of something I said that you questioned.
Heck, Rami Makhlouf, Refaat Al-Assad and Maher Al-Assad were the ones to start these practices.
I'm not cheerleading for the Syrian govt but I support its right for self-determination when dealing with imperialism from the govts I've lived under in the last decade...and oppose ethnic cleansing and settler-colonialism there (like what ZN supports in the Golan).
Except those are different subjects.
For one, Israel committing war crimes doesn't mean Baathist stopped being war criminals.
Israel committing ethnic cleansing or being an apartheid state doesn't mean the Alawites in Syria are innocent of the same practices.
And you can, again, read Patrick Seale and Nikolaos Van Dam's books on the topic, they are very insightful and give a very good idea of what Syria is like politically before the war.
Noting that those aren't books I just searched up online and put them in, in fact, I do recall posting Patrick Seale's book here on PoFo a good while back since he's one of my favorites.
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EDIT:
On a side note, after my last post (not this one, the one before it), I realized after reviewing it that 'll probably be dragged into a question about the numbers which I didn't know in full; So I started looking up any available sources (this is why I've been online for 3 or so hours so far here).
Anyhow, what this edit is here to say;
The studies from Al-jazeera center for research is useless and propaganda at best.
There are multiple research centers belonging to the Baath party covering all these topics, but again propaganda.
And there is the Fiker center for studies (all politics), somewhat reliable though not very much on the numbers angle, then there is the Arab center for research and study (not the same as below) which seems to be heavily skewed towards the Muslim Brotherhood.
The most reliable sources so far I found were the Arab center for research and policy studies, Rawabet center for research and strategic studies, and to some extent ٌRafiq Hariri center for middle eastern studies ( though they have some bias, their information has always proven accurate and reliable).
You can use those for in-depth and detailed information regarding many parts of the region.