What is Baathism

This paper aims at analyzing the various forms of violence carried out by the different categories of people directly involved in the actual Syrian war: ‘regular' soldiers, Alawite elite troops (plus the different security services), (mostly) Alawite militiamen, rebels from the (Sunni) mainstream armed opposition, and Islamist fighters, not to mention rogues who thrive on unruliness. This paper's hypothesis is that the demobilization of combatants is just partially connected to concrete issues – in the sense, for example, that any nationwide economic reconstruction will probably not be enough to promote reconciliation – since other factors impede any eventual transition from a violent civil war to a peaceful agreement, among them: a peculiar middle-eastern sense of masculinity plus the plague of sectarianism which builds organic barriers between people.