The Times (London), UK
March 29, 2014 Saturday
Assad’s gangs will kill us all, say terrified Sunnis
by Hannah Lucinda Smith
Syrians living in a prosperous city hit by a jihadist offensive have
warned of sectarian pogroms as communities that previously lived in
harmony turn on each other.
All sides within the sectarian divide in Latakia – an affluent area,
with an Alawite majority that has stayed loyal to President Assad –
say that they fear massacres as the fighting intensifies.
At least 2,000 Armenian Christians have fled from villages around
Kassab, north of Latakia, which was seized by hardline Sunni rebels
this week, some from groups aligned to al-Qaeda.
As the rebels advanced towards the city, there was evidence that Sunni
and Shia residents were turning on each other. People living in Sunni
neighbourhoods in Latakia said that the rebel advance had seen them
branded as a “fifth column” within the city and that they had been
targeted by Alawites, President Assad’s clan.
Speaking via Skype from within the city, a young man who gave his name
only as Kareem described how Alawite militias had attacked businesses
in Suliba, a large Sunni neighbourhood. “Yesterday it was crazy,” he
said. “A group of Shabiha [pro-Assad gangs] attacked a coffee shop and
started beating people with the butts of their Kalashnikovs. We are so
scared, because we have no weapons and no one can help or protect us.
“There is no way for us to leave the city, because all the roads out
go through Alawite villages. We know that if the regime decide to
attack us, there will be a big massacre.”
Observers say that residents in Alawite areas that have so far been
spared the excesses of the conflict may now target Sunnis who
previously lived peacefully alongside them. “If the regime begins to
lose, and rebel jihadis begin to close in on Latakia, the chance of
pogroms by the Alawites will go through the roof,” said Joshua Landis,
director of Middle Eastern studies at the University of Oklahoma, who
is himself married to a Syrian Alawite.
Professor Landis said that there have been apparent efforts by
jihadist groups to limit atrocities – or, at least, the reporting of
them. Photographs posted on rebel websites, some of them later
removed, have shown churches being stripped of crosses. At least two
photographs of rebel fighters holding the severed heads of enemy
soldiers have been published.
For many of the Armenian Christian community, the attacks carry grim
echoes of the 1915 pogroms in the same area by the Ottoman Turks.
“This is the third expulsion of Armenians from Kassab, and it
represents a major challenge to modern mechanisms for the protection
of ethnic minorities,” said the President of Armenia, Serzh Sargsyan,
after learning of the fall of Kassab.
Among rebels participating in the campaign area number of Chechen and
Saudi commanders. In a speech posted online from Latakia, Ibrahim bin
Shakran – a Moroccan, and a former inmate at the Guantánamo Bay camp –
exhorted his men to defeat “Russians, Hindus and Majii [Iranians and
Alawites]”, and to oppose the “Zionist and Masonic” conspiracy against
them.
At the Kassab border crossing to Turkey, seized this week by Syrian
rebels, smoke rises from the burning forests, and artillery and aerial
bombardment shakes the ground. “We have been planning to liberate
Kassab for two months,” said Morad, a rebel fighter, nursing wounds
from an earlier encounter. “We thought that the regime knew what we
were planning, but they were surprised by our strength.”
As Morad and other injured rebels sat in a field clinic in the Turkish
border town of Yayladagi, a large explosion shook the ground. Five
minutes later, one of the fighters took a phone call: the sound we had
heard was a munition from a regime jet, and it had killed 24
opposition fighters.
The rebels denied Syrian government claims that Turkey was supporting
their advance and facilitating their resupply, saying the Turks
allowed only the wounded to cross the border.
Sheikh Omar, a Syrian working with the IHH, a Turkish humanitarian
organisation, said the only option for getting supplies was to smuggle
them over the mountains. “We can’t cross legally, and that puts
pressure on us,” he said.
For the fighters, too, the lack of access across the border is
problematic. Ahmed, a young rebel who had crossed the border the night
before, said that Turkish border forces were detaining people who were
trying to cross into Syria, and sending back people who were trying to
cross into Turkey. “The Turks are watching the border closely,” he
said.
In an effort to stop the rebels’ advance towards the coast, the regime
forces have set a large swath of the mountain forest on fire, and are
attacking Kassab and the surrounding area with shells and MiG jets.
However, despite the regime’s intensifying offensive from the air, the
rebels claimed yesterday they were still pushing towards the villages
of Hlaibiah and Soulas, on the road to Latakia itself. They appeared
confident that their advance would continue despite reports of
government reinforcements arriving from Tartous to the south.
“This region represents the people of the regime,” said Morad. “They
bring fighters and weapons from here to all other areas of Syria, but
now the regime has started bringing their forces from other places to
defend this region. If we reach Latakia, Bashar will leave Syria.
“If we can reach Latakia city, we will destroy Assad’s dream of
establishing an Alawite country,” he added. “We are fighting to save a
united Syria.”