With international pressure over the UN investigation into the murder of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri piling up on Syria, the country's young president, Bashar al-Assad, has taken the identification of his country with himself and his besieged family to new levels.

In a televised speech on Friday he defiantly stated: "It will not be President Bashar who will bow his head nor the head of his country. We only bow to God almighty."

This verbal circling of the wagons has made many Syrians fear that they will be the ones paying the price for the actions of the presidential family, some of whose members were mentioned last month in an interim UN report. International pressure is starting to have an effect on the Assads and on the dominant Alawite minority to which they belong, as could be gleaned last month in the Alawite heartland.

The expensive limousines with tinted windows, the wrap-around sunglasses of the bodyguards and the sharp suits of the men paying their respects to the family of the deceased made it appear like a mafia funeral. But this was the town of Bhamra, a day after the burial of interior minister Ghazi Kanaan, who was said to have committed suicide and who had been an Alawite strongman.

His death, suicide or not, was the clearest sign thus far of the tensions that are tearing at the heart of what has for more than 30 years been a fairly united ruling elite, bound together by ties of faith, blood, money and, above all, a fear of being overthrown.

"The regime in Iraq was a minority, it's the same case in Syria," said Intissar Yunis, 31, an Alawite presenter for Syrian television, as she explained her community's concern about the Sunni majority in the country.

"At the end of the regime in Iraq it seemed that the Iraqi people deeply rejected the regime. That may happen in Syria."

The Alawites, thought to make up just over 10 per cent of the population, follow a strain of Islam that is considered heretical by orthodox Sunni. Yet, through the Ba'ath party that used to be, in name, pan-Arab, socialist and secular, they control the levers of power, particularly the army and the security services.

The Alawite in particular fear that if Syria eventually faces international sanctions - should it fail to co-operate with the UN inquiry - and perhaps even military action, then they will be the biggest losers. "Now that the time has come for the regime to be held accountable, it is the Alawites who they are holding accountable," said Mrs Yunis.

Many feel they are unjustly being singled out. Until the 1960s they were privileged and isolated in their mountains above the Mediterranean coast. But many live there in poverty. "People are upset. They say they have not profited," said Mrs Yunis.

Some definitely have, as the grand villas in Bhamra and the Assad's fiefdom in nearby Qardaha attest to. But they stand side by side with tumbledown concrete shacks of the villagers who did not have the right contacts and were left behind.

Syria expert Joshua Landis, an American professor married to an Alawite and living in Damascus, said any community's ability to benefit from the government depended on how many of its people held high office. "Because the president is an Alawite, they have more top dogs." But he agreed that the wealth had been unevenly spread and many Alawites were worried, "that they are going to pay the price for the privilege of the few".

Mr Kanaan was popular in much of the Alawite community because he could be relied on to look after his own. The UN investigators interviewed Mr Kanaan, and the Syrian government linked his death to the pressures that this and the incessant rumours in the Arab and Lebanese media put him under. But interim findings by the UN probe suggested that he was not involved and analysts have speculated that his death may have been linked to an internal struggle within the Alawite sect.

The UN report, however, included the names of two other very prominent Alawites. Both are members of President Assad's family: his brother-in-law Asef Chawkat, who heads military intelligence, and the president's younger brother, Maher, who commands the presidential guard. Mr Chawkat is among several Syrian officials that UN investigators this week requested be sent to Lebanon for questioning.

If Mr Kanaan belonged to the old generation of ruling Alawites who grew up with Hafez al-Assad, founder of the dynasty, Mr Chawkat clearly belongs to the new guard. Initially he had to fight to be accepted by the Assad family but in recent years he is reported to have formed a strong bond with the young president.

Many Alawites grumble that the new generation, who mostly grew up in the cities, do less to look after the rest of the community. This was exacerbated by President Assad's modest reforms, which had shifted some attention and resources away from the old Alawite pillars of power, mainly the army, and towards education, high-tech and commerce, said Mr Landis.

Over the years the Alawites have been increasingly urbanised and many now live in the coastal cities of Latakia and Tartous. One Sunni writer in Latakia, Munther al-Masri, said most of his friends were Alawites because they were the new intellectuals and artists, while "the Sunni have retreated back to religion". He said his Alawite friends wrestled with the question of their allegiance to the government.

"I believe that Hafez al-Assad, the late president and the current leader's father, put them in that corner. They are linked to thesystem because they are its servants," said Mr Masri.