During the French Mandate period, the society was divided by religion and geography; the landowning families and 80 percent of the population of the port city of Latakia were Sunni Muslim.

The eastern border with Syria ran roughly along the An-Nusayriyah Mountains and the Orontes River from north to south.

Both have majority Alawite populations; parts of modern-day Al-Suqaylabiyah, Masyaf, Talkalakh and Jisr ash-Shugur Districts also belonged to the state.

[3] By 1920, a growing anti-French sentiment in the region led to the establishment of the Arab Kingdom of Syria under King Faisal I on 7 March 1920.

[4] In early September 1920, the French divided the territories of their mandate based on heterogeneous population to grant local autonomy to demographic regions.

[4] Some argue that the French acted to intentionally divide the population, limiting the spread of "the urban contagion of nationalist agitation".

[2] The divisions were thought to serve the interests of a Christian minority over a Muslim majority, favouring colonial rule and stifling dissent.

[3] In 1922, the French administration instituted an elected government made up of councils of representative of the states of Aleppo, Damascus and the Alawite territory.

[3] In June 1923 the French administration, headed by General Maxime Weygand, allowed individual states to elect their own representative councils.

[3] The Alawi preferred to be grouped with the territories of Lebanon, in contrast to Sunnis and Christians populations demanding Syrian unity.

This was attributed to the peasant status of most Alawites, "exploited by a predominantly Sunni landowning class resident in Latakia and Hama".

[11][12][13][14] King Abdullah II of Jordan called it the "worst-case" scenario in the conflict, fearing a domino effect: fragmentation of the country along sectarian lines, with region-wide consequences.

[15] The December 2024 Syrian rebel offensives and the subsequent fall of the Assad regime sparked renewed speculation by some analysts about a potential revival of an Alawite state with Russian backing.

[17][18][19] More importantly, the insurgency in Western Syria led by Alawite remnants of the Assad regime that killed 14 officers later that month can pose many challenges by the new government.