'Assad or We Burn the Country': How the Syrian Regime Prevailed

Before the phrase was spray-painted on walls and stenciled on cars, Syrian military officers heard it in meetings to discuss how to quell an antigovernment uprising sweeping Syria in 2011.

“Assad or we burn the country.”

The stark words warned those who would defy President Bashar al-Assad. And when protests morphed into war, Mr. Assad, backed by hard-core members of his Alawite religious sect, made good on the threat, presiding over much of Syria’s destruction in order to maintain his grip on power.

“In every meeting we had, the Alawite officers would say it—‘Assad or we burn the country,’” recalled Abduljabar al-Akidi, then a colonel in the Syrian army. “I knew that Assad would not leave until he had demolished the entire country and blood would run in the streets.”

Today, after nearly eight years of conflict, Mr. Assad is on the verge of victory. His forces have clawed back control over much of the country, with the help of Russian air power and Iran-backed foreign militias. Despite his government’s documented atrocities, Arab states that long shunned it are beginning to normalize relations, evidently resigned to the regime’s survival.

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