Syria Direct: As sons of Alawite and Druze families continue to come home in coffins year after year, members of Bashar al-Assad’s sect and other pro-regime minorities have begun to express their discontent over the war’s human toll.
Alawites in the Latakia village of Basnada exchanged fire with regime forces late last year following the burial of a local soldier, demanding that the regime stop sending their young men off to the front, reported pro-opposition news channel al-Aan TV.
This month, a group of Druze stormed a regime recruitment station in Salhkad in Swuyada province and forcibly removed a young man arrested for avoiding military recruitment, reported pro-opposition All4Syria. Similar incidents have occurred in Swuyada as far back as December 2013, when a group of elders broke into a military barracks and removed 450 young men wanted for military service, according to All4Syria.
“Every family has suffered the death of sons, the widowing of daughters, ” Abu Muhammed al-Latakani, the alias of an Alawite writer from Latakia now residing in Damascus tells Syria Direct’s Ghardinia Ashour.
“The rope of misery is growing tighter around their necks without them seeing a convincing reason for the war.”
But the possibility of an uprising against the president is “a dream,” the writer says, because hardline Islamist militias such as Jabhat a-Nusra and the Islamic State “constantly remind the vast majority [of Alawites] that they will eliminate them entirely.”
Q: Seeing as you belong to a specific sect, does this mean that your political point of view is predetermined?
Personally I don’t belong to any sect. Rather, I think that sects are a cover that hides the truth: people don’t have a role in their destinies.
Sectarian interests monopolize, control and take away from people their role [in determining their fate] and the scope of their real actions. Nothing remains for them except for these vertical, divine choices that they call on to replace their earthly failures.
When people take control of their own roles, and their leaders are born of their aspirations and express their interests and strive to ensure their honor and to be of service to them, then the people will rip up these repugnant sectarian covers.
As far as I’m concerned, seeing as I was born in that province and to this group, yes my political point of view is predetermined as long as the Syrian street doesn’t know any alternative powers. I mean, alternative to the criminal and degenerate parties that divide up the land. Reality is my choice, until powers come about that include, and mend, and build bridges. [Continue reading…]
