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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| In Syria's war, Alawites pay heavy price for loyalty to Bashar al-Assad |
| 2015-04-08 |
| Assad's problem is he can't trust his Sunni troops and Alawites are in increasingly short supply. In the Assad regime's heartland, dead officers are sent home in ambulances, while the corpses of ordinary soldiers are returned in undecorated pick-up trucks. Then come the press gangs: military recruiters raid houses to find replacements by force for the dwindling ranks of Syria's military. Sharing their sect with President Bashar al-Assad, Alawites have long been the core constituency for the Syrian regime. As the civil war drags into its fifth year, the minority sect is seen by opposition rebels as remaining unwaveringly loyal. But from inside the community, the picture looks very different: as their sons die in droves on the front lines, and economic privileges -- subsidies and patronage -- cease, Alawites increasingly feel they are tools and not the beneficiaries of the regime. In a series of exclusive interviews, Alawites from the coastal province of Latakia, the sect's heartland, have told the Telegraph of how they are now trapped between jihadists who consider them apostates, and a remote and corrupt regime that told them the war would be easy to win. "Most don't have salaries now, and some don't even have food to eat," said Ammar, a businessman in Latakia. "My friends ask me: 'Mr Ammar what shall we do? The regime wants to take us as soldiers. We will die. But we don't have the money to get out'." The scale of the sect's losses is staggering: with a population of around two million, a tenth of Syria's population, the Alawites boast perhaps 250,000 men of fighting age. Today as many as one third are dead, local residents and Western diplomats say. More at the link. |
| Posted by:phil_b |
| #3 The telegraph isn't the same since the left leaning Barclay brothers ruined it. |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2015-04-08 16:36 |
| #2 You go to war with the tribe you got. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2015-04-08 09:21 |
| #1 Alawites pay heavy price not to be massacred to the last man, women, child & household pet---you little pommy moron. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2015-04-08 04:58 |