A billboard sponsored shows pictures of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (R) and his late father former president Hafez al-Assad in Latakia in March, 2016 | Louai Beshara/AFP via Getty Images War Room Alawites pay the price for backing Bashar Assad ISIL turns guns on Alawite minority on Syria’s coast.

A series of lethal bombings ripped through the Syrian coastal cities of Tartus and Jableh in late May, killing around 150 people. ISIL immediately claimed responsibility for the blasts, stating that they deliberately targeted "gatherings of Nusayris," or Alawites; in their eyes the worst kind of heretics.

Shocking attacks on civilians are nothing new in the five-year-old Syria conflict. The Syrian regime and, in recent months, Russia have repeatedly used air power to rain down indiscriminate terror on densely populated civilian areas and hospitals in Aleppo and cities in rebel-held northwestern Syria.

The recent bombings on the coastal areas of Syria are significant, however, because the coast had until now been the only truly calm area in the country. The stability of these areas had been largely attributed to support for Bashar Assad among his Alawite co-sectarians, who comprise around a 65 percent majority in the coastal zone.

These attacks could now have a significant impact on the position of the Alawite sect, who have been a vital prop for the Assad regime since the 1970s. The question is now whether recent events will reinforce Alawite support for the regime or cause them to change their allegiances. The Alawites have become increasingly alarmed that Assad cannot ultimately protect them from an impending massacre at the hands of Sunni extremists. These attacks may turn out to be the final straw.

The Alawites, who make up 12-15 percent of Syria's population, have historically been an obstreperous and loosely connected group, as the Mamluks, Ottomans, French and post-independence nationalists learned. They all cracked down harshly on the sect, or factions of it. Since the 1960s, the Ba'athist regime, and more particularly the Assad family dynasty, have progressively co-opted the entire Alawite community to the point that it is now automatically conflated with the Syrian regime. This conflation is a mistake, as many Alawites did not benefit from the regime and many did not support its ruthless totalitarianism.

What the regime did consistently provide to Alawites, however, was security — something that the sect has lacked throughout its history. In return, Alawites provided the backbone of the regime’s security apparatus. After 2011, Alawite fighters on Syria’s northern, eastern and southern battlefields kept Assad afloat long enough that Hezbollah, Iran, Russia and, indirectly, the Obama administration could intervene to preserve the regime when it faced military reversals in 2013 and mid-2015.

But after five years, Alawites fears of a reckoning with the Sunni majority are finally coming home to roost. In 2012, I wrote that sticking with Assad could increase the odds of an unforgiving Sunni retribution. This seems to be hitting home now as Assad’s brutal campaign against Sunni Syrians has drawn the world’s jihadist cohorts into the country and pushed many formerly moderate Sunni Syrians into their waiting arms.

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Until now Assad and his allies have been able to preserve at least some façade of being able to protect Alawites and other minorities within its areas of control. Signs of Alawite discontent emerged, however, when suicide bombings became frequent in Alawite suburbs of Homs from early 2014, a city at the frontline of the civil war.

Alawites marched in the streets against the government's failure to protect them, and then again in August 2015, when Latakia Alawites protested against the arrogance of Assad acolytes like Suleiman Hilal al-Assad who showed callous disrespect for ordinary Alawites.

In short, the kind of social contract — or Faustian bargain — between the Assad regime and Alawites, which began after the 1982 massacre of the Sunni dissidents in Hama, is starting to crack.

Alawites may start looking to Vladimir Putin rather than Assad as their main source of security.

For many Alawites, the benefits of sticking with Assad are beginning to look scant. The Tartus and Jableh bombings represent a major security failure by the regime that will both enrage and terrify Alawites. These most recent attacks could, therefore, both serve to drive a wedge between the sect and the regime, or serve to push the Alawites further towards total dependency on Assad.

Indeed, when I spoke to a contact in Syria, he reported that some Alawites believe the regime to be behind these bombings. While it may seem far-fetched to suggest the regime would attack its own heartland, credible reports of deliberate regime-planned car bombings in Damascus in 2012 in order to frighten Alawites and other minorities into clinging closer to its protection show that the regime is capable of such tactics. Either way, Alawite misgivings about the recent bombings on the coast indicate a growing level of mistrust of Assad and his security services in manipulating events.

Given the absence of any alternatives, greater dependency on the regime seems the more likely effect.

A group of Alawite communal leaders are seeking to reform the sect's identity, reject the long-standing conflation of the sect with the regime, and distance themselves from Assad’s Iranian masters. Their statements suggest Alawites are searching for a way out of their deadly predicament. Russia’s deployment on the coast and elsewhere in Syria has possibly changed calculations for the Alawites and they may start looking to Vladimir Putin rather than Assad as their main source of security.

In addition, images during the recent ceasefire of Syrian revolutionaries climbing out of the rubble of their homes, continuing to protest for a democratic pluralist Syria, and challenging the totalitarianism of the jihadists may convince Alawites that potential partners still exist for a post-Assad cross-sectarian front against the jihadists.

This may be the Alawites' best hope of having any secure future in Syria. Any possibility for outreach to the moderate Syrian opposition will also require an Alawite effort to distance itself from the Assad regime and undermine Assad's main pillar of support.

The shock of being struck by ISIL in their heartland may precipitate Alawites to seriously reconsider their position. The longstanding illusion that Assad was their protector has been seriously punctured.

Leon T. Goldsmith teaches in the department of political science at Sultan Qaboos University, Muscat, Oman. He is the author of "Cycle of Fear: Syria's Alawites in War and Peace" (Hurst, 2015).