Why is this relevant for Syria?

Much of the Levant, like the Balkans, was a mosaic of ethnicities and religious groups for centuries. Minorities lived side by side on relatively harmonious terms. What changed, then, in recent times, that triggered such ferocity among erstwhile neighbours?

The harmony of bygone eras, much as it was romanticised by our short memory, existed within the framework of multi-ethnic empires where authoritarianism left room for limited autonomy for minorities — the lack of modern state infrastructure and the use of the state treasury mainly to fund armies and royal extravagance left minorities free to worship and educate according to their own customs and culture, as long as this did not lead to sedition and rebellion. But more recently multi-ethnic states have found themselves ruled by more modern authoritarianism — one that is ill at ease with the even limited nature of religious or cultural autonomy.

Thus, the Soviet Union kept non-Russian minorities under the boot. Yugoslavia discriminated against non-Serbians. Arab nationalism crushed Kurds and Berbers, and sought to expel Jews, Armenians, Greeks and Westerners. Iran's Islamic Republic trampled on any effort to assert Baluchi, Azeri, Kurdish or Arab identity because nationalism ran contrary to Islam's universal message. Never mind, of course, that message's tendency to support Persian dominance, much as in the workers' paradise of the Soviet Union where Russian chimed with Communism and non-Russian often became synonymous with subversive.

Part of the reason why the former Soviet Union and the former Yugoslavia disintegrated then was that decades of repressed aspirations by minorities led to a nationalist backlash. In Iran it has not happened yet only because the Islamic Republic is still successfully keeping it under the boot. In Syria, by contrast, the story seems to be following the Balkan script.

The Assad family has naturally stoked sectarian hatred in the hope of riding the storm as the defender of stability and guarantor of survival for those minorities that would feel most threatened by the president's demise. But the more corpses pile up, the harder it is to presume that national reconciliation and a multicultural mosaic can be achieved the day after Assad goes.

As we watch and they die, as we did 20 years ago with Bosnia, I am reminded that conscience, at the collective level demanded for state action, usually kicks in when it is much too late — not just to spare individual tragedies on a grand scale, but also to preserve the territorial integrity of disintegrating multi-ethnic states.