Religious warfare haunts Syria’s villages: despatch

H/T EDL Buck

The Telegraph:

Religious groups that have lived peacefully together for generations have been plunged into savage local conflicts, as The Sunday Telegraph discovered in villages deep inside Latakia Province.

Salma village in Latakia Province close to the front line which resembles a ghost town which is bombed and shelled daily.

Salma village in Latakia Province which is close to the front line and now resembles a ghost town. It is bombed and shelled daily. Photo: Warren Allott

By , Beit Swelheh, Latakia province

8:30AM GMT 06 Jan 2013

Perched on a hillside amid the forests, streams and waterfalls of Syria’s Latakia province, the village of Beit Swelheh was once a place of harmony.

By day, Abo Mohamed al-Shokri, a Sunni resident of the village, would share lifts to work with his Alawite neighbours, and by night they would smoke shisha pipes together, sitting under starlit skies and listening to the call of the crickets.

“Before the war I had a brilliant relationship with my Alawite neighbours,” said Mr Shokri, 40. “We were very friendly to each other, and spent much time in each other’s homes”.

 

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About Eeyore

Canadian artist and counter-jihad and freedom of speech activist as well as devout Schrödinger's catholic

5 Replies to “Religious warfare haunts Syria’s villages: despatch”

  1. Sunnis are fighting Alawites? What Muslims fighting each other? But I thought it was only Western Imperialists that fought Muslims.

    Yeah, right. So it’s not just Sunnis versus Shi’ites, but now we’ve got Sunni versus Alawite. Although, I believe that Alawites are probably Shia anyway. Oh, who knows? Does it matter?
    Sunni, Shia, Salafi, Wahabbi – they’re all trash.
    Basically, it’s the same old story. Members of the Religion of Peace fighting more members of the Religion of Peace when they’re not fighting non-Muslims. I personally couldn’t care less. The more Muslims fight each other, the better. They breed like rabbits anyway and this is just a form of population control. It’s just a shame that the Liberal Leftists haven’t noticed it.

  2. The Moslem sects will gladly kill each other, but they will stop fighting to kill us, then go back to killing each other.

  3. Fleet of Russian warships reportedly en route to Syria to head off a Western attack

    Israel and the US said to be mulling a military campaign to secure chemical weapons held by Moscow’s civil war-ravaged ally

    A flotilla of five Russian warships laden with hundreds of troops, which is headed toward Syria, is a show of force meant to deter Western armies from intervening in the war-torn nation, the London-based Sunday Times reported.

    Previous reports cited Russian diplomats to the effect that the vessels were being put in place in order to evacuate thousands of Russians who still remain in Syria if the situation in the country called for it.

    However, a Russian intelligence source was quoted on Sunday as saying that the presence of over 300 marines on the ships was meant as a deterrent to keep countries hostile to the Bashar Assad regime — a key ally of the Kremlin — from landing special forces in the country.

    […]the US, along with several key allies, was prepared to launch a military intervention in Syria should the Assad government turn its chemical weapons against the rebels. A military source told the Times that US forces could be ready “rapidly, within days,” and implied that the necessary forces were already in the region.

    “The Russians will not tolerate Western ground intervention and stay idle,” an Israeli defense source was quoted as saying. “Syria is too important for Russia.”

    “Russia should be prepared for any developments, as it believes the situation in Syria might reach its peak before Easter,” a Russian diplomatic source was quoted as saying.

    http://www.timesofisrael.com/russian-warships-reportedly-en-route-to-syria-to-prevent-western-attack/

  4. Balkanisation of Syria, a speciality of democrats, EU and UK consensus. However T E Lawrence wrote in 7 pillars of wisdom that the creation of a u ified Syria was hopeless a d would never stand.

  5. Very telling:

    “”Before the war I had a brilliant relationship with my Alawite neighbours,” said Mr Shokri, 40. “We were very friendly to each other, and spent much time in each other’s homes”.

    and

    “Meanwhile, the Sunni rebels who took Beit Swelheh from them have gained little more than a husk of a village and a burning resentment of their one-time neighbours – whose militia allies still rain sniper fire on them from afar”

    and:

    “In a tour of what remained of Beit Swelheh, Mr Shokri told how the tensions started during last year’s peaceful anti-government protests, which Sunni residents of the village saw as a chance to complain about discrimination. “

    Damn [/sarc], the alawites simply wouldn’t voluntarily surrender to the Sunni supremacists once instigated by ikhwan (MB) of the injustice of such coexistence…D-I-S-C-R-I-M-I-N-A-T-I-O-N!! WAR!