by Andrew Fox, spiked
The ‘inclusive’ jihadists feted by the West are complicit in the pogroms against Syria’s minorities.
Fighting has engulfed the Druze-majority city of Sweida in southern Syria, leaving over 200 people dead. This week, Druze villages have been overrun by Syrian regime forces and allied Islamist militias under the guise of ‘restoring order’, only for those forces to unleash executions, looting and arson upon Druze neighbourhoods. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, 92 Druze were killed (including 21 civilians executed by government troops) in the space of a few days. In one incident, an 80-year-old Druze sheikh had his moustache, a symbol of honour, forcibly shaved by invading fighters. He was reportedly killed shortly afterwards. This is, it appears, the dark reality of ‘national unity’ under Syria’s new rulers.
The Druze of Sweida are not the only minorities being targeted. In March, on Syria’s Mediterranean coast, over a thousand Alawite civilians were slaughtered in sectarian pogroms. Jihadist militants of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army rampaged through Alawite villages, committing mass murder and revenge killings. A Reuters investigation found that nearly 1,500 Alawite men, women and children were killed between 7 and 9 March by Sunni fighters in Alawite areas.
The violence was ostensibly triggered by a short-lived rebellion of loyalists to former Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, but the response descended into outright collective punishment. There have been killings, looting and arson targeting Alawites at 40 separate sites at least. Nor were the perpetrators rogue outlaws – they included at least a dozen factions now under the command of Syria’s new government. Many of these are notorious Islamist militias, who have long been under international sanctions for prior atrocities. Graffiti scrawled on a ransacked Alawite home declared: ‘You were a minority and now you are a rarity.’ The intent was nothing less than ethnic cleansing.
Read also: Minorities in the Middle East are facing extinction by Jake Wallis Simons, Telegraph