...At 1 a.m. last Sunday, in the farming town of Surgu, about six
hours away from here, a mob formed at the Evli family’s door.
The ill will had been brewing for days, ever since the Evli family
chased away a drummer who had been trying to rouse people to a predawn
Ramadan feast. The Evlis are Alawite, a historically persecuted
minority sect of Islam, and also the sect of Syria’s embattled
leaders, and many Alawites do not follow Islamic traditions like
fasting for Ramadan.
The mob began to hurl insults. Then rocks.
“Death to Alawites!” they shouted. “We’re going to burn you all
down!”...
...The Alawites fear the sectarian violence spilling across the
border. Already, the sweltering, teeming refugee camps along the
frontier are fast becoming caldrons of anti-Alawite feelings.
“If any come here, we’re going to kill them,” said Mehmed Aziz, 28, a
Syrian refugee at a camp in Ceylanpinar, who drew a finger across his
throat.
He and his friends are Sunnis, and they all howled in delight at the
thought of exacting revenge against Alawites...
...The Alawites point to the surge of foreign jihadists streaming into
Turkey, en route to fight a holy war on Syria’s battlefields. Many
jihadists are fixated on turning Syria, which under the Assad family’s
rule has been one of the most secular countries in the Middle East,
into a pure Islamist state.
“Do you really believe these guys are going to build a democracy?”
asked Refik Eryilmaz, an Alawite member of the Turkish Parliament.
“The Americans are making a huge mistake. They’re helping Turkey fight
Assad, but they’re creating another Taliban.”...
...The Syrian rebels hardly conceal a vicious sectarian antipathy.
Khaldoun al-Rajab, an officer with the rebel Free Syrian Army, said he
witnessed two Alawites in a car take a wrong turn in Homs and end up
in a Sunni neighborhood. “Of course they were arrested and killed by
rebels,” he said...
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