They live in a sliver of land about 30 miles wide, trace their ancestry back to the Canaanites and swear allegiance to a totalitarian state, which serves as their protector. And, after more than 16 months of revolt in
Syria
, the country's Alawite sect remains firmly at the heart of the regime's fight to see off its challengers.
Fuelled by a belief that the events in Syria pose an existential threat to them, and coloured by a long history of persecution and prejudice, the Alawites are showing few signs of drifting away from the regime. Rather, the longer the uprising has continued, the more intransigent their support has become.
"That seems to be the way it is for the core group of supporters among the Alawites," said a British diplomat in Beirut. "There has been messaging directed at them to let them know that their futures aren't tied to Assad [president] and his gang. But it would be fair to say that a large majority of them still see themselves indelibly linked to the ruling clan."
With the international community increasingly perplexed about how to manage the violence in Syria – an escalating crisis with serious implications for the region – attention has at times focused on how the Alawites could be tempted away from the regime. Such a move would rapidly lead to the fall of Damascus.
"It's wishful thinking by the west," said the head of the Alawite community in Lebanon, Rifaat al-Eid. "They have been coming to us for many months, all of the embassies, and gone away disappointed. We will fight for the Assads until the end."
The diplomat agreed: "They are not part of the solution at this point. They fear they have far too much to lose."
In the past 42 years, the Alawites of Syria have taken centre stage in national affairs, largely due to the access afforded them by the country's modern-day godfather, former president Hafez al-Assad, who seized power in 1970.
Soon after becoming president, Assad, himself an Alawite, announced a "corrective revolution", then went about creating the Middle East's most efficient police state. Less than a decade after Hafez al-Assad took power, members of his sect, and especially his clan, were established in virtually all senior positions of the military and security establishment and the most meaningful positions in other state institutions.
Though accounting for only 12% of Syria's population, the sect comprises the core of the establishment, the power of which has been almost absolute throughout 42 years of strongman rule. This has always been a sore point with some members of Syria's Sunni majority, which comprises 75% (Christians, Druze and Kurds make up most of the rest).
But the resentment runs deeper in some quarters. Some Sunnis have also seen Alawites as heretics, a view that has shored up a belief among members of this small, mystical sect with tenuous links to Shia Islam that they would be wiped out by sectarian foes if the regime fell.